Anaphora, antecedents, and accessibility (dynamic semantics)

In this paper I discuss the notion of accessibility in dynamic semantics an d develop a refinement of the accessibility relation, which pays special at tention to the description expressed in the anaphoric expression and the pr ogression in a discourse. Anaphoric expressions are interpreted as referrin g to the most accessible item of their kind. I employ choice functions as t he formal means to represent this accessibility relation. This element repr esents the most-accessible of its kind in a particular discourse. Linguisti c expressions do not only depend in their interpretation on the accessibili ty structure of a discourse, they also change this structure. The referent of an indefinite NP becomes the most accessible item of its kind. This chan ge of the accessibility is modelled by updates of choice functions as an ad ditional level of meaning. It will be shown that this extended formalism yi elds not only a more adequate representation of discourses, but also solves the problem of how to establish anaphoric links and supplies a uniform rep resentation of definite and indefinite expressions with respect to their po tential to change the accessibility structure of the discourse.