contextsfor

Contextsfor is a term used in linguistics and logic to denote the set of contextual conditions under which a given proposition, utterance, or action is true, appropriate, or felicitous. In this usage, contextsfor(P) represents the collection of contexts—combinations of time, place, discourse participants, background assumptions, and other relevant factors—that grant P its validity or applicability. The concept is often invoked in dynamic or contextual semantics, where truth conditions depend on the surrounding context rather than on the proposition alone.

A formal way to think of contextsfor is as a function that maps a proposition or utterance to a domain of contexts. This domain may be modeled as a structured space of contextual parameters that update as discourse progresses. The notion is used to capture how interpretation changes with shifting conversational premises and how future utterances may be viewed differently once the context has evolved.

In practice, contextsfor helps explain the behavior of indexicals and demonstratives, whose meanings depend on the selected context. It also facilitates analysis of presupposition triggers and utterances whose felicity conditions vary with contextual factors such as speaker, time, and location. Beyond theoretical linguistics, contextsfor has applications in natural language processing and artificial intelligence, where selecting or maintaining appropriate reasoning or reference frames is important for interpretation, translation, or question answering.

Critics caution that specifying a usable set of contextual dimensions for contextsfor can be challenging, and that overly broad or underspecified contexts can reduce explanatory power. Nonetheless, the concept provides a useful tool for modeling context-sensitive interpretation and the dynamics of discourse.