English Linguistics - Practice with Entailments and Presuppositions James Madison University

[This is not an assignment, but answers will be provided on 9/30/13.]

• In each of the two sentence pairs below, which sentence has a presupposition that the other does not have? What is that presupposition?
  
  1. The captain realized that the ship was in danger.
     The captain thought that the ship was in danger.
  2. That the criminal was arrested is likely.
     That the criminal was arrested is significant.
• For each of the following sentences, state how it is related to the sentence "The director and his assistant adore the actor's new haircut" (using E for entailment, P for presupposition, and N for neither).
  
  1. The director adores the actor's new haircut.
  2. Someone doesn't adore the actor's new haircut.
  3. The director adores something about the actor.
  4. The actor has a new haircut.
  5. The director and his assistant like the actor's new haircut.
  6. There is a director.
• In the previous exercise, which one of the entailments could best be described as a lexical entailment?
• For the sentence "The actor got a haircut today," what kind of logical entailment is "The actor's hair is now shorter, at least in some spots"?