Accessing Discourse Referents Introduced in Negated Phrases: Evidence for Accomodation? Barbara Kaup & Jana L¨ udtke Berlin University of Technology 1 Introduction According to proponents of dynamic semantics, the meaning of a sentence is not defined in terms of its truth conditions but rather in terms of its potential to change the context in which it occurs. This concept of meaning as context-change potential is cental, for instance, in Heim’s File-Change Semantics (Heim, 1982) or Kamp’s Discourse-Representation Theory (DRT, Kamp, 1981). According to these theories, a sentence containing an indefinite noun phrase (NP) [such as a lion in (1a)], in- troduces a discourse referent into the discourse representation, and this discourse referent can be utilized when in the upcoming text the respective entity is being referred to (e.g., 1b, see Figure 1). Thus, such a sentence changes the context by providing a discourse referent to which upcoming text can be related. Accordingly, dynamic semantics is particularly well suited to account for anaphoric binding across the sentence boundary. (1) a. In the cage there was a lion. b. It was sleeping and snoring. xy cage(x) lion(y) in(y, x) sleeping(y) snoring(y) Figure 1: Discourse representation for text (1). Negation provides an interesting case in this context: An indefinite NP in the scope of the negation operator introduces a discourse referent. However, this dis- course referent is usually not available for anaphoric reference in the upcoming text. For instance, in (2), the anaphoric reference in the second sentence seems awkward. This apparent inaccessibility is accounted for by assuming that negation is an op- erator that applies to a sub-ordinate DRS, and that discourse referents represented in a negated sub-DRS are inaccessible for anaphor resolution in the main-DRS (see Figure 2). (2) a. In the cage there was no lion. b. *It was sleeping and snoring.