Presuppositions and Pronouns - Nijmegen Centre for Semantics

Preface
In his thumbnail sketch of the history of dynamic semantics, Kamp reports as
follows:
[The study of certain linguistic phenomena] has led to what might
be termed a 'dynamic' theory of the semantics of natural language,
which was first developed, in at least two different forms, in the
early eighties. One of these has come to be known as Discourse
Representation Theory (DRT). [...] The semantic approach which
DRT exemplifies has been developed also in other ways, most
notably in the form of Heim's File Change Semantics, which was
conceived at roughly the same time as DRT. [...] ] Since the early
eighties a number of further variants of the approach have
appeared, most notably the relational approach of Barwise and the
development of Dynamic Predicate Logic of Groenendijk en [sic]
Stokhof. (Kamp 1990: 33-34)
This is the standard account. It has it that dynamic semantics is an approach
to meaning that was developed in the early eighties by Kamp and Heim, and
was subsequently carried on by others, including Barwise and Groenendijk
and Stokhof. Although historically speaking there may be some truth to this
view, I believe it must be rejected for ideological reasons. In my opinion,
Heim's work inaugurated a paradigm which is quite different from the DRT
approach. So different, in fact, that I propose to reserve the label 'dynamic
semantics' for the approach taken by Heim, Barwise, and the Amsterdam
school led by Groenendijk and Stokhof. This approach is truly dynamic in a
sense in which DRT is not.
DRT is a theory of interpretation in two senses of the word. It is a theory of
meaning and it is also a theory of language understanding. DRT is a cognitivist
theory, which is based on the insight that a semantic theory must of
cogni-
necessity take into account the mental processes involved in handling
language.
It is somewhat harder to explain in one paragraph what dynamic semantics
is, partly because it isn't quite clear what it is. What is clear is that its starting
point is the pedestrian observation that utterances cause changes. An