Article · Wikipedia archive · Last revised Jun 15, 2026

Question under discussion

In semantics, pragmatics, and philosophy of language, a question under discussion (QUD) is a question which the interlocutors in a discourse are attempting to answer. In many formal and computational theories of discourse, the QUD (or an ordered set of QUD's) is among the elements of a tuple called the conversational scoreboard which represents the current state of the conversation. Craige Roberts introduced the concept of a QUD in 1996 in order to formalize conversational relevance and explain its consequences for information structure and focus marking. It has subsequently become a staple of work in semantics and pragmatics, playing a role in analyses of disparate phenomena including donkey anaphora and presupposition projection.

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In semantics, pragmatics, and philosophy of language, a question under discussion (QUD) is a question which the interlocutors in a discourse are attempting to answer. In many formal and computational theories of discourse, the QUD (or an ordered set of QUD's) is among the elements of a tuple called the conversational scoreboard which represents the current state of the conversation. Craige Roberts introduced the concept of a QUD in 1996 in order to formalize conversational relevance and explain its consequences for information structure and focus marking. It has subsequently become a staple of work in semantics and pragmatics, playing a role in analyses of disparate phenomena including donkey anaphora and presupposition projection.1234

See also

See also

Notes

Notes

  1. Beaver, David; Geurts, Bart; Denlinger, Kristie (2021). "Presupposition". In Zalta, Edward (ed.). Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Retrieved 2021-03-05.
  2. Partee, Barbara (2009). "Lecture 10: Focus and Information Structure: Semantics and Pragmatics" (PDF). Course Notes, Moscow State University.
  3. Anderbois, Scott. "The QUD Model of Discourse" (PDF). Course Notes, Brown University.
  4. Roberts, Craige (2012) [1996]. "Information structure: Towards an integrated formal theory of pragmatics". Semantics and Pragmatics. 5. doi:10.3765/sp.5.6. hdl:1811/81500.
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