English Linguistics - Assignment 7 James Madison University

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

• Which of the following sentences are tautologies (T), which are contradictions (C), and which may be true or false depending on the situation (S):
  
  1. Parrots are birds.
  2. My mother has no children.
  3. JMU is a great university.
  4. The Earth revolves around the sun.
  5. The back of the house is the front of the house.
  6. Fruits and vegetables are not good for you.
  7. The dead bug once lived.
• Identify the thematic role of each NP and PP in the following sentences:
  
  1. The musician pushed his piano onto the stage.
  2. John melted the ice with a blowtorch.
• 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.
• 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 a more semantic entailment.
  1. John voted for George W. Bush. --> John voted for a republican.
  2. The cow jumped over the moon. --> The cow jumped.
  3. A pediatrician stole my homework. --> A doctor stole my homework.
• For each sentence below, write down a presupposition made in that sentence:
  1. Our new robot is acting strange.
  2. Valerie regretted not receiving a Corvette for her birthday.
  3. The professor forgot that her students are brilliant.
  4. Please take me out to the ball game again.
  5. Do your pigs have wings?