Topical Restriction and Answerhood

Abstract

Information structure is the term designating a very lively and active branch of work, which deals with various topics such as anaphora, topical restriction, questions, congruence and exhaustification. This work tends to diverge in many directions which hardly can be seen to be compatible with one another. In this paper we attempt to improve the situation by trying to develop the minimal formal tools required to study the logical properties of the various issues involved and integrate them step by step. We successively deal with anaphoric connections between pronouns and other terms in terms of individual satisfaction by possible witnesses; with questions and topics in terms of sets of possible witnesses; with topical restriction and answerhood in terms of topical satisfaction; we conclude with a compositional deconstruction of Henk Zeevat’s exhaustification operation.