Incremental semantics for propositional texts

Abstract

In this paper we are concerned with the special requirements that a semantics of texts should meet. It is argued that a semantics of texts should be incremental and should satisfy the break in principle. We develop a semantics for propositional texts that satisfies these constraints. We will see that our requirements do not only apply to the semantics but also have consequences for the syntax. The interaction between text structure and text meaning will turn out to be of crucial importance to the semantics of texts. We develop two versions of the semantics: one representational, one in update style.