Ling 201: Homework 8 Due Tuesday, May 2 at 9pm. Late submissions not accepted. Upload your typed answers to Sakai, as a pdf with filename "last hw8"....

LINGUISTIC QUESTIONS:

(1) Practice with entailment-

The quantifier no is downward-entailing for both its N and VP. Show, using a set diagram (a.k.a. a

Venn diagram), that our semantic rule for no predicts both of these facts.

(2) NPIs and most -

Sentence (a) below is grammatical. Sentence (b) is not. Does this data pose problems for our general

theory of NPIs? Explain in two or three sentences.

a. Most [N people who’ve ever taken a linguistics class] loved it.

b. Most people who’ve taken a linguistics class [VP loved it ever].

(3) Quantifier ambiguity-

Sentence (a) below is ambiguous. First, draw the two pictures corresponding to its two readings

(i.e., like the dot pictures we say in the lecture slides; you can begin with five linguist dots and

five semantics-textbooks dots). Second, give two LFs for these two readings, and say which LF

corresponds to which picture.

a. Exactly three linguists read a textbook on semantics.

(4) “Bare” plurals and quantifier ambiguity -

John was talking to students means basically the same thing as John was talking to some students. Bust

sentence (a) and (b) below aren’t necessarily identical in meaning; more specifically, (b) can mean

something that (a) cannot. Explain why in a sentence or two.

a. Every professor was talking to students.

b. Every professor was talking to some students.

(5) Presupposition -

Sentence (a) below entails both that I locked my car, and that I have a car. Which of these two

entailments is also a presupposition? How do you know? (Answer in one or two sentence.)

a. I remembered to lock my car.

(6) Presupposition of quantifiers -

As we saw in the previous homework, a semantic rule for neither has two parts (given below): it

requires there to be exactly two N’s, and it requires that there are no N’s who VP. Which of these

parts is a presupposition? How do you know? Answer in a sentence or two.

Jneither N VPK = jJNKj = 2, and JNK JVPK = Ø

(7) Implicature -

The two sentences below have the exact same entailments, but communicate very different stories

about Danny’s life: one is a fairy tale, the other is a tragedy. What is the source of this inference? Is

it an implicature? How do you know? Discuss.

a. Danny met the love of her life and got married.

b. Danny got married and met the love of her life.

ANSWERS NEED TO BE IN PDF FORMAT