The dynamics of questions and focus

This article presents a dynamic account of questions and focus which combines the logical appeal of the partition theory of questions with the empirical strength of the structured meaning account of questions and focus. A dynamic analysis which treats meanings as context change potentials (e.g. Stalnaker, Kamp, Heim, Groenendijk & Stokhof) will provide us with a substantial account of the dependence of focused answers on the context set up by their preceding questions. Questions pose conditions on the focal structure of their answers (Paul 1880) and can further restrict the domain of subsequent focusing operators like only (e.g. Zimmermann, von Stechow 1991, Jäger 1996, von Fintel 1995). As an illustration consider the following example: