Dynamic Excursions on Weak Island investigates the phenomenon of Weak Islands within the framework of Dynamic Semantics. Weak Islands are contexts that are transparent with respect to some, though not all quantificational dependencies that involve an operator and a variable-expression. Specifically, this book explores the consequences of the novel claim that Weak Islands reduce to the same principles of Dynamic Semantics that account for inaccessibility. In addition, it examines in both empirical and theoretical terms the precise relationship between the dynamic theory of Weak Islands and the algebraic semantic approach developed by Szabolcsi & Zwarts (1993). This inquiry leads to a number of further developments of Dynamic Semantics, such as an intensional version of Existential Disclosure and an algorithm for computing the dynamic properties of an expression on the basis of its Boolean properties.
This book is of interest to formal semanticians and linguists working on the syntax/semantics interface.
