semantics Semantics (from grc, σημαντικός ''sēmantikós'', "significant") is the study of reference, meaning, or truth. The term can be used to refer to subfields of several distinct disciplines, including philosophy Philosophy (f ...

pragmatics In linguistics and related fields, pragmatics is the study of how context contributes to meaning. The field of study evaluates how human language is utilized in social interactions, as well as the relationship between the interpreter and the int ...

, and

philosophy of language In analytic philosophy, philosophy of language investigates the nature of language and the relations between language, language users, and the world. Investigations may include inquiry into the nature of meaning, intentionality, reference, ...

, the common ground of a conversation is the set of

propositions In logic and linguistics, a proposition is the meaning of a declarative sentence. In philosophy, " meaning" is understood to be a non-linguistic entity which is shared by all sentences with the same meaning. Equivalently, a proposition is the no ...

that the interlocutors have agreed to treat as true. For a proposition to be in the common ground, it must be

common knowledge Common knowledge is knowledge that is publicly known by everyone or nearly everyone, usually with reference to the community in which the knowledge is referenced. Common knowledge can be about a broad range of subjects, such as science, literat ...

in the conversational context. The set of

possible world A possible world is a complete and consistent way the world is or could have been. Possible worlds are widely used as a formal device in logic, philosophy, and linguistics in order to provide a semantics for intensional logic, intensional and mod ...

s compatible with the common ground is often called the ''context set''. The concept is fundamental to many theories of discourse. In such theories, the

speech act In the philosophy of language and linguistics, speech act is something expressed by an individual that not only presents information but performs an action as well. For example, the phrase "I would like the kimchi; could you please pass it to me?" ...

of assertion is often analyzed as a proposal to add an additional proposition to the common ground. Similarly,

presuppositions In the branch of linguistics known as pragmatics, a presupposition (or PSP) is an implicit assumption about the world or background belief relating to an utterance whose truth is taken for granted in discourse. Examples of presuppositions include ...

are taken to be licensed when they are already established in the common ground. While such approaches are typically construed as

pragmatic Pragmatism is a philosophical movement. Pragmatism or pragmatic may also refer to: *Pragmaticism, Charles Sanders Peirce's post-1905 branch of philosophy *Pragmatics, a subfield of linguistics and semiotics *''Pragmatics'', an academic journal in ...

, the framework of

dynamic semantics Dynamic semantics is a framework in logic and natural language semantics that treats the meaning of a sentence as its potential to update a context. In static semantics, knowing the meaning of a sentence amounts to knowing when it is true; in dynami ...

treats the semantic

denotation In linguistics and philosophy, the denotation of an expression is its literal meaning. For instance, the English word "warm" denotes the property of being warm. Denotation is contrasted with other aspects of meaning including connotation. For inst ...

s of sentences as functions which update the common ground. In many theories, the common ground is one of several elements of the

conversational scoreboard In linguistics and philosophy of language, the conversational scoreboard is a tuple which represents the discourse context at a given point in a conversation. The scoreboard is updated by each speech act performed by one of the interlocutors. Mo ...

Notes

Semantics Pragmatics {{semantics-stub

See also

Notes