Introduction to Linguistics - Assignment 10

James Madison University

  1. Do Exercise 9 at the end of Chapter 4.
  2. Some review practice with Entailments Part 1: Write down at least one structural entailment for each of the following sentences. For each, explain how you determined that it is an entailment and how you determined that it is specifically a structural entailment.
    1. Lucille wants a career in television.
    2. Ten trains pass through Harrisonburg each day.
    3. Our goldfish died.
  3. More practice with entailments Part 2: For each of the following sentences, write down at least one lexical entailment (hint: consider whether any of the words in the sentence are hyponyms of some other word and/or whether there is some similar relationship between phrases that you can substitute.)
    1. A cow jumped over the Atlantic ocean.
    2. A pediatrician lives in my neighborhood.
  4. What are the four "Maxims of Discourse" (AKA "conversational maxims")?
  5. After rereading the discussion of IMPLICATURES Chapter 4, attempt Exercise 24, just examples a and b and Exercise 25, also just examples a and b.
  6. Starting to identify PRESUPPOSITIONS (see textbook pgs 167-168 for info on how they differ from entailments and presuppositions: Examine the pair of sentences below and determine which sentence has a presupposition that the other does not have. What is that presupposition?
Syllabus for ENG308 Linguistics Resources Oxford English Dictionary Send email to Prof. Cote