Semantics
1. What
does a prototype computer have? Do those parts have parts?
2. The
top of a thing is one of its sides : the side that is uppermost. The bottom of
a thing is one of its sides; the side that is down . the front is one of the
sides : the sides that faces forwards. The back is one of its sides, the side
that faces away from the front. What sense relation hold between the words
side, top, bottom, front and back? Give reasons to support your answer.
3. Parent
is superordinate for mother and father. At the level immediately below parent
there are only those two hyponyms. What is the semantic relation between mother
and father? Is it incompatibility or antonymy? Justify your answer!
4. For
class discussion. The following words are hyponyms of footwear; shoes,
sneakers, trainers, sandals, slippers, boots, galoshes.
a. Is
footwear the superordinate that you use for all the hyponyms or do you use the
word shoe in a general sense that we might distinguish as shoe 1, as the
superordiante?
b. Find
as many other hyponyms of footwear (or shoe) as you can
c. Draw
up a hyponym hierarchy, for the given words and any additional ones you have
found.
d. Try
to provide a brief characterization of the meaning of each word in the
hierarchy, in the form of its immediate superordinate plus a modifying phrase.
3. In
February 2016 a minister government minister announced the resignation of a
senior civil servant in his department. According to one report, it was only
from listening to the radio on his way back to work from a hospital appointment
that the civil servant heard about his own alleged resignation. This led to a
question in the media: ?Who is going
to be resigned next?(The
question mark at the beginning marks the sentence as semantically odd.) The
civil servant eventually resigned in May 2016. Resigning is supposed to be a
conscious act performed by the person who quits the post, but if, in talking
about the situation described, someone had used the expression ?The minister resigned the civil servant,
would the sentence have been causative? Would it have the same meaning as The minister made the civil servant resign?
4. Classify
the following as achievements, states, activities or accomplishments: (a) The
kid was having a tantrum. (b) The band had a makeover. (c) I caught a cold. (d)
Part of the Louvre resembles a pyramid. (e) The music stopped. (f) He got the
joke the second time. (g) Khalid played the violin
5. Ministry
of education and culture told the Indonesian government that they had save many
million of rupiahs because schools were developing. Think of the sentences in
italics as part of newspaper report (and note that the pronoun they refers to
the Indonesian government) identify the combinations of tense and aspect used
in the sentences and draw a diagram to represent the relative timing of events.
Position time of report on a time line . then indicate the positions when
ministry of education and culture told the Indonesian government something,
when the government save many millions of rupiahs and when schools developed.
6. Think
about possible interpretations of the modality in the five sentences below. Can
they be understood as deontic, epistemic, both or neither? Give a reason for
each answer.
7. In
terms of relative scope can’t P means not (possibly P) deontically as well as
epistemically. The same holds for cannot P. what about may not (or mayn’t , if
this reduced form is acceptable to you ) they may not have an invitation) what
is the scope of negation relative to the scope of modality for these two
interpretations?
8. Few
corgis are vegetarians is true provided the proportion of vegetarian corgis is small,
in comparison to the number who are non vegetarian. However, few is an
ambiguous quantifier. It can also serve as a cardinal quantifier, as when
someone who has been asked wheter there are many boats in the harbor replies; no, there are few boats
there today. If possible, write the set theoretic specification for this
sentences truth conditions. If that is too hard explain in words the meaning of
few when it is a cardinal quantifier.
9. Why
is there no need for a preparatory introduction of topic before giving the
following warnings : keep your head down and mind the step, where the
underlined phrases are definite.
10. Pseudo-clefts
can be inverted, for example the hammer was what hit the floor. What hit the
floor was the hammer. Is the presupposition the same or different? (hint :
start by trying to find a proposition that is both entailed by the hammer was
what hit the floor and implicated by the hammer was not what hit the floor that
is to say; find out what it presupposes)
Answer
1. Monitor,
keyboard , mouse, CPU are hyponyms of the superordinate word computer, parts
have parts of CPU are RAM, CD-RO drive, hardisk drive, mother board and
adapter. Monitor : driver horizontal, flyback, RGB.
2. Side
is a superordinate for top, bottom, front, back. The statement names the latter
four as different kinds of side, and the relation of incompatibility holds
between these four hyponyms of side. The definitions that follow each colon in
the statement consist of the superordinate side and a modifier.
3. Mother
and father are incompatibility, this is my mother entailsthis is not my father
; this is my father entails this is not my mother. For instance : a person who
is not my mother need not be my father, but could be my aunt or cousin or a
passing stranger. The term antonymy is reserved for incompatibility between
pairs of adjectives or adverbs; mother and father are nouns.
4. (a)
we don’t sell marshmallows here : this is a shop 1’ would be a memorable
objection, but it feels like one that respects the meaning of the word shoe. On
the other hand, the following objection would strike me as peculiar in meaning:
we don’t sell sandals here ; this is a shop 1 .’ and it would be just as
strange with slippers or boots substituted for sandals, (b) (c) and, in single
quotes, (d) draw an upside down tree with shoes (or footwear) clothing for the
feet, having a sole as the overall super ordinate. On three branches below it
put shoes footwear covering just the feet. Hyponyms dangling from branches
below shoes include clogs wooden shoes, trainers and sneakers. (sneakers and
trainers are synonym pair) it should not be hard to supply a concise meaning
shoes for) hyponyms below boots include
football boots boots for football and gumboots. If you know the word, then
jandals waterproof minimal sandals is hyponym of sandals.
3. Talking
about the situation after the civil servant’s resignation – more than two
months later – the sentence ?The minister resigned the civil servant might
be taken as causative, if a correct understanding of it is: ‘an action by the
minister directly caused the civil servant to resign’. This situation could be
described by the two-clause formulation The minister made (the
civil servant resign), because this covers both direct and
indirect causation. However, coming so much later it seems more likely
that, if it was the minister’s announcement in February that caused
the civil servant to resign in May, the causation was indirect. If so,
a one-clause sentence ?The minister resigned the civil servant wouldnot
be an appropriate way to talk about it, because one-clause causatives
encode direct causation. Back in February 2016, ?Who is going to be resigned
next? was probably not a question meaning ‘Who will be
made to resign next?’, but rather a way of catching people’s attention with
the ill-formedness of the question as a way of getting
them to think about the meaning of the word resign and,
from there, to consider the minister’s apparent high-handedness.
4. (a)
Activity. (b) Accomplishment. (c) Achievement. (d) State. (e) Achievement when
talking about a single stop, because the following is not an acceptable way of
expressing ‘The music waned but continued’: *The music stopped
stopping; also because restitutive again works
straightforwardly. The music was stopping is unacceptable
unless we interpret this as habitual or if it is said with reference to a
scheduled stop. On the habitual interpretation, The music stopped is
an activity. (f ) Achievement. (g) Activity. Yes, The violin is
a definite direct object, but not one that delimits the activity: Khalid
played the violin does not encode a situation in which he plays until
the violin is “finished” (compare Khalid played the sonata)
5. The
verb told is past simple, had saved is past perfect; were developing is past
progressive .
Before the time after
the time
Of writing of
writing
Time
of writing
The gov. saved the many
million………
Ministry of education
told the Gov…………………
Schools were developing
6. They
must be made from buckwheat can be either deontic (a demand or strong
recommendation that buckwheat be used) or epistemic (speaker infers from
evidence _ colour or taste, perhaps- that buckwheat is an ingredients. We must
study hard is deointic. The email need not have been sent can bear either interpretation;
deontically that there was no demand for the sending of
the email; epistemically that it is possible that the email has not yet been
sent. I can hear you now indicates “capability” sound level, transmission and
reception conditions mean that what is coming from you is now being heard.
Although it is possible
to use might to report permission having been given, found that almost all
instances of might in their large samples of conversational and academic English
were epistemic. A deontic interpretation of they might or might not make it is
somewhat implausible because its hard to imagine permission being given for
people to succeed. You better apologise is deontic . this is a reduced form of
you had better is not used to express epistemic modality.
7. Deontic
may not is similar to can not : negation has wider scope : not (possibly (they
have an invitation))’. However, epistemic may not behaves like must not : modality
has wider scope : possibly (not( they have an invitation)) for the comparison
of relative scope, it does not matter that may is represented as possibly’ , using
the same word as was used for can, the meanings of may and can share the notion
of possibility, the negative ruled out part of their core meanings.
8. B
N H is a small number, B represents the set of boats and H the set of things
that are in the Harbour question) taking few as a cardinal quantifier , the
speaker is just saying that there was a small number of boats in the harbor;
the harbor seemed uncrowded by boats . only the intersection is taken into
consideration. Boats that are not in the harbor are left out of the
calculation. What number is a small number ? that is pragmatically decided by
the speaker and relates to the size of harbor, the density of boats that the
speaker is used to, to the fact that they are boats rather than cars or ants or
castles, and to the speaker’s ideas on what the addressee would regard as a
small number in such a case.
9. It
is a reasonable assumption about prototypical interlocutors that each has a
head, which justifies first-off definite reference. And the warning about the
step would tipically be given in a situation where it is possible for the
addressee to experience it directly , for example by looking or tapping with a
stick , again making it part of the background without further udo. The answer
is not simply that warnings of this kind may have to be issued in a hurry. Where
the danger is not so accessible an indefinite is perfectly feasible: careful,
there’s a snake in there .
10. The
presuppositions are the same for a pseudo-cleft and for an inverted
pseudo-cleft . the given example presupposes ‘something hit the floor”
