Type-theoretical grammar
For the sake of the argument: Ramsey test conditionals, inductive inference, and nonmonotonic reasoning
On the Representation of Context
Journal of Logic, Language and Information
CONTEXT '01 Proceedings of the Third International and Interdisciplinary Conference on Modeling and Using Context
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Three accounts relating meaning and context are compared: a classical or static one as proposed by Stalnaker, a contextual or dynamic one as proposed in Dynamic Semantics, and a massively contextual one, defended here. On the last view, meaning and interpretation is a matter of a change of an epistemic context by means of an inductive inference, thus of pragmatics. As in dynamic semantics, meaning is a matter of epistemic state change. But now it is construed normatively, and it is the contextual change that explicates meaning, not meaning that explicates why a context changes in the way it does. Meaning is contextual on this approach because the justification of inductive inferences depends on contextual parameters (such as a partition of answers, or a degree of caution with respect to the risk of incurring error, etc.) for whose assessment no objective standards can be given. Contextuality is not a feature of language per se, and questions of contextual change are not primarily linguistic ones.