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UMass Amherst LINGUIST 610 - Questions on Adjectives, Common Nouns, Definite DPs, and Presuppositions

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Seth Cable Semantics and Generative Grammar Fall 2011 Ling 610 1 Questions on Adjectives, Common Nouns, Definite DPs, and Presuppositions (1) An Exercise on the Semantics of Adjectives, Common Nouns and Definites Please compute the T-conditions that our system derives for the following sentence: a. The friendly doctor is an unwed man. Before providing the T-conditional proof itself, please state the lexical entries you will assume for “friendly”, “doctor”, “unwed” and “man”. Be especially mindful of which adjectives are intersective and which are subsective. (2) A Short Question on ‘Presupposition Projection’ The (proto-)theory of presupposition that we developed in class makes the following prediction. a. Prediction: If a sentence S contains a DP of the form [ the NP ], then any sentence S’ containing S will presuppose that there exists exactly one entity x such that [[NP]](x) = T. With this in mind, consider the sentence in (b) below. b. Either there is no Loch Ness Monster, or the Loch Ness Monster is very good at hiding. Please identify a problem that (b) poses for our (proto-)theory of presupposition. (3) Interpretability and Well-Formedness Again Consider the ill-formed structure below. a. The likes Joe smokes. b. Question: Can our semantic system interpret this sentence? Why or why not? c. Question: Briefly discuss any cross-linguistic predictions that follow from your answer to (b).Seth Cable Semantics and Generative Grammar Fall 2011 Ling 610 2 (4) An Exercise on Presuppositions in the English Cleft Construction The English cleft construction is exemplified by sentences like those in (a)-(b) below. We will assume that it has the (oversimplified) syntax in (c). a. It’s Dave who John likes. b. It’s Sue who likes Dave. c. Assumed Syntax of the English Cleft Construction S CleftP Relative-Clause Cleft-Marker DP who John likes It’s Dave In this exercise, you’ll be working out a compositional semantics for the English cleft construction. To begin with, let us assume the lexical entries in (d)-(e) below. d. [[ who John likes ]] = [ λxe : John likes x ] e. [[ who likes Dave ]] = [ λxe : x likes Dave ] Linguists and grammarians have long observed that the English cleft carries a particular presupposition. As indicated below, a cleft of the form It’s DP Relative-Clause presupposes that there is exactly one thing that the relative clause is true of. For example: h. “It’s Dave who John likes” presupposes that there is exactly one x such that John likes x i. “It’s Sue who likes Dave” presupposes that there is exactly one x such that x likes Dave j. Question 1 Please use our test for presupposition to verify the claims in (h) and (i). Linguists and grammarians have also long observed that, aside from its special presupposition, the English cleft construction doesn’t seem to differ much in meaning from ‘non-clefted’ English sentences. That is, the following truth-conditional statements seem to be accurate. k. “It’s Dave who John likes” is T if and only if Dave is the unique y such that John likes y l. “It’s Sue who likes Dave” is T if and only if Sue is the unique y such that y likes Dave m. Question 2 Please provide a lexical entry for the ‘cleft-marker’ it’s, which will predict: (i) the T-conditional statements in either (k) or (l) (ii) the presuppositions in either (h) or


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