I'm currently writing my PhD disseration. This page collects the chapters that are more or less presentable (although generally still incomplete), along with promissory notes for the rest. Any criticism or comment is heartily welcome; mail me. You might also be interested to see how I organise the LaTeX source.
Unlike the rest of this site, this work is not released under a CC license. That's intended as a legal statement: I'm retaining all my rights for the documents collected on this page.
The personal statement is, this is work in progress and I ask you please not to spread it around. If you want other people to know about it I'm delighted, but send them here to get it; that way they'll get the latest version and I'll have some idea of who's paying attention.
Chapter 1: Introduction
This isn't the introductory introduction; there will be a "Chapter 0" which even more briefly introduces the main ideas and surveys the rest of the diss. This one is more contentful, giving the main arguments for taking attentiveness seriously and a bit of an introduction to how we're going to do it. No formulas though, just plain old-fashioned prose. [ pdf ]
Chapter 2: A dynamic model
A 'flat' semantics suitable for modelling (simple) dialogue. Not presentable.
Chapter 3: A static model
A relational semantics for more complex attention attitudes the dynamic model can't handle. Not presentable.
Chapters 4,5,6: What is it good for?
Not written. See the slides for my LeGO talk “‘Now that you mention it…’: Dynamic attention to possibilities” for some ideas.