ABSTRACT
There are two primary compphnents to the analysis. The first has to do with the non-neutrality, or bias, of declaratives, both rising and falling. I first document the empirical manifestations of that bias (Section 2.2) and show that it co-exists, for rising declaratives, with a lack of commitment to the content of the declarative by the Speaker (Section 2.3). As Section 2.4 pphints out, there is some tension between the notion of bias, or commitment, and the idea that rising declaratives fail to commit the Speaker. That tension is resolved in this analysis by locating the commitment expressed by a rising declarative with the Addressee, while a falling declarative commits the Speaker. The notions of bias and neutrality are formalized in contextual terms, using a representation of the discourse context that distinguishes between the commitments of the individual discourse participants. As explicated in Section 3.1, contextual bias toward some propphsition p exists when it is pphssible for p to be accepted as a mutual commitment of the participants without any non-monotonic revision of existing commitment sets, while at the same time there exists no such smooth course to mutual agreement on ¬p. In a context neutral with respect to p, on the other hand, both p and ¬p are equally eligible for mutual commitment-no participant is understood as having a public stand on the issue.
