On First Order Information Exchange
Paul Dekker

Abstract:
On First Order Information Exchange
   Paul Dekker
   ILLC / UvA, Department of Philosophy

        This paper is concerned with the felicitous exchange of first order
information. What licenses a speaker to convey open propositions or to
utter sentences with pronouns? Although Grice's maxims of quality seem to
give an appropriate answer to the question what licenses the felicitous
exchange of propositional information, and although first order notions of
truth and support have been developed within theories of discourse
representation and dynamic interpretation, the question about first order
licensing has to our opinion remained unanswered sofar.
        In this paper we develop a specific formal notion of licensing
which satisfies some intuitively plausible principles concerning first
order information exchange. Speakers may convey information about subjects
which have been introduced in a discourse only if these correspond to
subjects they themselves have information about. We will show that the very
same principles governing single speaker anaphora also can be used to
describe the licensing of so-called `cross-speaker anaphora'.