title: Order effects in dynamic semantics.
abstract: In their target article, Wang and Busemeyer (2013) discuss question order effects in terms of incompatible projectors on a Hilbert space. In a similar vein, Blutner recently presented an orthoalgebraic query language essentially relying on dynamic update semantics. Here, I shall comment on some interesting analogies between the different variants of dynamic semantics and generalized quantum theory to illustrate other kinds of order effects in human cognition, such as belief revision, the resolution of anaphors, and default reasoning that result from the crucial non-commutativity of mental operations upon the belief state of a cognitive agent.
authors.affiliation: Department of German Studies and Linguistics, Humboldt University, Berlin.
authors.forename: Peter Beim
authors.initials: PB
authors.lastname: Graben
mesh_terms: D006801:Humans; D008128:Logic; D011789:Quantum Theory; D012660:Semantics
keywords: Anaphor resolution; Belief revisions; Default reasoning; Dynamic semantics; Question order effects; generalized quantum theory