Changing the Context. Dynamic Semantics and Discourse

Within the logical-semantical tradition, the meaning of a sentence is (often) equated with its truth conditions: to know what a sentence means is to know in which circumstances it is true or false. In more up-to-date approaches, however, the meaning of a sentence is identified with its context change potential: to know the meaning of a sentence is to know how it changes a context. The difference is not that the context dependent nature of interpretation is taken into account. The importance of contextual factors is generally acknowledged within traditional logical semantics, too. Usually, truth conditions are stated relative to both a model of the world, and certain other parameters which provide contextual information, such as the time and place of the utterance, its source and addressee, and possibly other features of the utterance situation. What is new, is the focus on context change: interpretation not only depends on the context, but also creates context. This is why the more fashionable approaches are