Introduction to Linguistics - Assignment 9 James Madison University

[This assignment will be marked only as an acceptable or unacceptable effort.]

1. Do Exercise 21 on presuppositions (starting with example d) at the end of Chapter 5.
2. Write down at least one entailment for each of the following sentences.
   1. Lucille wants a career in television.
   2. Ten trains pass through Harrisonburg each day.
   3. Our goldfish died.
   4. The painting that we saw in The Louvre was a little better than my painting.
3. For each of the pairs of sentences below, explain why the first entails the second and state whether you think it is an example of a structural entailment, a lexical entailment, or more general world knowledge entailment.
   1. John voted for Barack Obama. --> John voted for a democrat.
   2. The cow jumped over the moon. --> The cow jumped.
   3. A pediatrician stole my homework. --> A doctor stole my homework.
4. Gathering data on lexical relations --
   1. Ask at least 2 people (separately, so they don't hear each other's responses) to give one example of each of the following:
      1. The best example of a sterotypic...

         bird
         toy
         college class
         jump
         song

      2. The opposite of ...

         cat
         old
         shoe
         (to) staple

      3. A synonym for ...

         friend
         (to) laugh
         cool
         artichoke

   2. Present your results in a table, replacing the names of respondents with numbers or some other private code.
   3. Now, study your data carefully and answer the following questions: Were all your responses the same? If so, discuss why you think this happened. If not, discuss all the factors that you think may have affected particular responses. Be thorough. (The type of question, the type of word, and differences between individual respondents are just some of the factors you might consider.)







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