Preliminary Material / Maria Aloni , Alastair Butler and Paul Dekker -- 1: The Semantics and Pragmatics of Questions / Paul Dekker , Maria Aloni and Alastair Butler -- 2: The Logic of Interrogation / Jeroen Groenendijk -- 3: Axiomatizing Groenendijk's Logic of Interrogation / Balder ten Cate and Chung-Chieh Shan -- 4: Optimal Inquisitive Discourse / Paul Dekker -- 5: Only Updates. On the Dynamics of the Focus Particle Only / Gerhard Jäger -- 6: The Dynamics of Topic and Focus / Maria Aloni , David Beaver , Brady Clark and Robert van Rooij -- 7: Nobook-body (Anything) Else / Paul Dekker -- 8: Exhaustivity, Questions and Plurals in Update Semantics / Henk Zeevat -- 9: Only: Meaning and lmplicatures / Robert van Rooij and Katrin Schulz -- 10: Scalar Implicatures: Exhaustivity and Gricean Reasoning / Benjamin Spector -- 11: Nuclear Accent, Focus, and Bidirectional OT / Maria Aloni , Alastair Butler and Darrin Hindsill -- 12: Counting (on) Usage Information: WH Questions at the Syntax-Semantics Interface / Alastair Butler -- 13: Nuclear Rises in Update Semantics / Marie Šafářová -- Bibliography / Maria Aloni , Alastair Butler and Paul Dekker -- Index / Maria Aloni , Alastair Butler and Paul Dekker.

The study of questions and answers is challenging for various fields of theoretical linguistics, logic, analytical philosophy, and more recently computer science. Research into questions and answers addresses old and raises new and important questions about the semantics / pragmatics interface and about the dynamics of interpretation. This book brings together current work on the topic as it has been developed in Amsterdam, and congenial academic sites, over the past 15 years. Amsterdam is one of the breeding grounds for the formal study of logic and language, for dynamic semantics, and for the study of questions and answers. It covers the major issues of pragmatic/semantic investigation, including logical relations, context dependence, information structure, and more. It illustrates how semantic/pragmatic stance can be used for problems in other areas of linguistic theorising.

Description based on print version record.