Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Chapter 6: Semantics
5.
i) dog puppy cat kitten
+canine +canine +feline +feline
±adult -adult ±adult -adult
ii) Whereas man and woman are usually understood to be [+adult], dog and cat can be
used for either [+adult] or [-adult] animals.
The features [+circle], [+3 angles] and [+4 angles] risk being circular since they
simply take us back to the meanings of the words that we are trying to define in the
first place.
6.
i) At least the following are potentially fuzzy: soft, white, food, and mountain.
ii) Take, for example, ‘soft’. Whereas a baby’s skin or a ball of cotton are prototypical
examples of soft things, grass is something that is comparatively soft (compared to
pavement, for instance) but not among the things that are the best examples of
softness.
7.
8.
i) (a) icy, cold, warmth, heated
(b) drop, pick up, dump, let go
(c) eye, foot, hand, arm, leg
(d) digest, eat, chew, juicy
10.
i) dual, trial and exclusive-inclusive
ii) Gender (male vs. female vs. inanimate: he vs. she vs. it)
11. (a) [yellow cars] and motorcycles (cars that are yellow and motorcycles)
yellow [cars and motorcycle] (cars that are yellow and motorcycles
that are yellow)
(b) I followed [the man on the bicycle] (the man that I followed was on a bicycle)
I [followed [the man] on the bicycle] (I used a bicycle to follow the man)
(c) He said [he left yesterday] (He left yesterday)
He said [he left] yesterday (He said yesterday that he left.)
12.
(a) The man chased the intruder
<ag,th>
(b) The cat jumped from the chair onto the table
<ag> <source> <goal>
13.
(a) Larry should give what to the bride
<ag,th> <goal>
14. In the first sentence, each other has an antecedent (the men) that c-commands it in the
same minimal TP, as required by Principle A. In the second sentence, the intended
antecedent fails to c-command each other—in violation of Principle A. In the third
sentence, the intended antecedent is not in the same minimal clause—also in violation
of Principle A.
15.
i) The first interpretation that comes to mind is probably that she refers back to the
secretary.
ii) In our society, secretaries tend to be female and their duties include typing reports.
iii) Then, the more likely antecedent seems to be the architect, probably because we think
it is more likely for a woman to be an architect than a janitor and more likely for the
architect than the janitor to be typing the report.
16.
i) (a) the first sentence (b) the second sentence (c) the first sentence
ii) The words regret, realize and significant each carry the presupposition that their
complement clause denotes a proposition that it is true.
17.
i) It is not appropriate in (b).
ii) In both (a) and (c), the first underlined constituent (the one right after it was) carries
new information and the second underlined constituent carries old information.
In (a), for instance, the first underlined constituent indicates that the thing seen was a
meteorite and not a flying saucer, as speaker A is assuming.
iii) The first underlined constituent in (b) carries old information (it is already established
that Sally claimed something) while the new information (that she saw a meteorite
rather than a flying saucer) is in the second part of the sentence. This is the reverse of
what is supposed to happen in cleft sentences.