Ok, I didnt answer all of them, but I did do most of them. Feel free to disagree/propose other possibilities.
1. CAR *level 3* (taxonomical):
Basic level categories *level 2*: Car, Truck, SUV
Car sub-categories *level 1*: compact, subcompact, coupe, 2-door, 4-door, convertible, hatchback, station wagon?, to name a few
Truck sub-categories *1*: Pickup, Semi/tractor trailer/18-wheeler/etc., tow truck, mail/delivery(UPS,DHL) truck, fire truck, ambulance?, to name a few
SUV *1*: Jeep, Compact SUV/Mini SUV, camper/motorhome, 4WD, 4x4, etc.
**some terms don’t seem to fit nicely into a category such as station wagon, minivan, ambulance, and what about those “sport utility trucks” that can be a pickup or an SUV?
***possible lexical gap: I had to use car as a basic level category of car…
2. Levels of a hierarchy: see 10.2.1.1 (pg 176-7) Also see my hierarchy above, I labeled them.
3. agent (?), instrument, theme, patient, theme
4. Possible ambiguity: multiple meanings of ‘club’ (weapon, group of people, sandwich, place to dance). On the other hand, ‘ate’ selects sandwich as the only possible meaning. Therefore I would say this is not ambiguous.
5. Modality- Epistemic (possibility/necessity) vs Deontic (“the way it should be”). The example sentence represents epistemic modality (possibility).
6.a. heterogeneous, telic, punctual, semelfactive, perfective, iterative
7. a) entailment- my daughter has red hair requires that I have a daughter
b) contrariety- Kim could be married, but her husband is not very nice
c) independence- truth-values are unrelated
d) contradiction- one must be true
e) contrariety- this seems like it could be relative. If you just came in from outside in the sun it would probably be dark in the room, even if the lights were on. If you just woke up and walked into the room with all the lights on, it would be bright in the room.
8. miniscule, tiny, small, large, huge, gigantic
10. taxonomy is a type of hyponymic relationship in which the pair suits the pattern A X is a Y but not A X is a type/kind/sort of Y. Here is a possible analysis:
Taxonyms are a type of hyponyms, thus ‘taxonym’ is a hyponym of ‘hyponym’ and ‘hyponym’ is a superordinate of ‘taxonym’.
11. relative, negational, Boolean, Boolean
12. I assume a & b refer to making oatmeal on the stove rather than in the microwave. In that case, a)yes b)no (what if I boil oatmeal for a few seconds and then turn off the heat before its done cooking?) c)yes d)yes
13. pg 45
14. hyponymy defines the relationship between two words where one represents a type of the other (apple:fruit). Meronymy defines the relationship between part and whole (hand:finger)
15. I have completed/am currently completing all of the requirements set forth by the university in order to receive a degree.
16. spring mattress-1(prototype), futon-4, air mattress-3, couch-5, recliner-6, cot-3
17. These represent different facets of the word ‘text’. The first usage refers to the actual characters or script, while the second two refer to the content or meaning of the work as a whole
18. I’m not sure what the author of this question had in mind, but maybe he or she was referring to the idea of perspective? In that sense, we use the idea of ‘folk taxonomy’ which relies on perceptual features (i.e. taste, size?, shape?) to note that these are all kinds of fruits.
Here is my attempt at classifying the group of phrases on the review sheet. After a quick dinner break, get ready for part 3: MISC
Giant purple pizza shoe- incongruity. The most serious degree of clash; the ontological discrepancy is so large that no sense can be extracted without radical reinterpretation (pg 220).
The babies were madly in love- inappropriateness. We normally think of love as a concept not expressible between babies because of the complicated emotional connections involved are not typically a feature of a baby (pg 219-20).
The child audited the tax return- inappropriateness. See “the babies were madly in love”. A child is not considered able to audit a tax return.
Cheerful carpet- paradox. Cheerful can only be attributed to a living thing with emotions. Carpet does not fulfill these requirements and therefore a paradox is created (pg 220).
It’s raining cats and dogs- frozen metaphor. Idiom-like expression which shows resistance to modification, transformation, etc, but which differs from an idiom in that the effect of synonym substitution is not a complete collapse of the non-literal reading (pg 72-3). For example: “It’s raining felines and canines” does not remove the non-literal meaning of the phrase.
Kill you dead- pleonasm. Kill presupposes dead, and therefore dead is unnecessary and seems redundant (pg 220)
Free gift- pleonasm. See “kill you dead”.
Fit as a fiddle/cute as a button- Phrasal idioms (pg 70-2). These phrases draw meaning from a learned association, that is the non-literal meanings of these phrases cannot be determined from the meanings of the words they are composed of. A few tests to prove these are idiomatic phrases:
- Elements not separately modifiable without loss of idiomatic meaning
o *as cute as some buttons
o *as fit as three fiddles
o *as cute as a blue button
- Elements cannot take contrastive stress, or be the focus of topicalizing transformations
o *it is a button that she/he/it is as cute as
o *it is a fiddle that she/he/it is as fit as
You can’t win them all- cliché. This phrase is fully compositional, in that its meaning can be determined from its parts, but in this case, the phrase as a whole has a larger “global” meaning of ‘don’t be upset at losing this time because there will be other opportunities to win’. In fact, it could be said that “you can’t win them all” is the default encoding of the aforementioned meaning (pg 74).
This week, test review. It will probably take up more than 2 posts but here goes the first. I'll start with the word pair section of Identifications from the review sheet.
Part 1: Identifications
A. Relations of inclusion:
apple:fruit- hyponymy; more specifically, apple is a hyponym of fruit and fruit is a superordinate of apple. There are two tests for hyponymy (pg 148-9):
- First, hyponymy is a transitive relation. The formula to test for transitivity is:
o If A is a hyponym of B, and B a hyponym of C, then A is necessarily a hyponym of C.
o An apple is a type of fruit. A fruit is a type of food/produce. An apple is a type of food/produce. Because these are all true, the relationship between apple:fruit is transitive and thus hyponymic
- A second way to test hyponymy is by looking at entailment.
o Apple entails fruit, but fruit does not entail apple. This demonstrates that apple is part of a group of fruits, i.e. apple is a hyponym of fruit, fruit is a superordinate of apple.
pretty:gorgeous- near synonyms, in that they both convey the same meaning ‘attractive’ and coexist in adjacent positions on a scale of degree. For example, while each term entails the other, gorgeous probably means a higher degree of attractive than pretty (pg 156-7)
barrel:gun- meronymy; more specifically, barrel-meronym(part) gun-holonym(whole). In fact, meronymy is the part-whole relationship. There are several ways of proving or thinking about meronymy (pg150-3).
- First, there is a test to determine meronymy: An X is a part of a Y, A Y has an X/Xes.
o A barrel is part of a gun, a gun has a barrel. Because these statements are true, this proves the meronymic relationship.
- There are also a few prototype features of meronymy which come into play:
o Canonical necessity: a well-formed gun must have a barrel
o Motivation: the barrel has a necessary function within the gun
I would say that barrel is a part of a gun and not a piece (see pg 153: 8.2.2.2)
finger:hand- meronymy (see barrel:gun).
B: Relations of exclusion:
east:west- directional opposites;
these are straightforward directional terms that contrast with one another. A subcategory
of these is reversives which are verbs that movement in opposite directions
(tie and untie). See page 166-7 under
reversives.
come:go/stand:sit - reversives (see east:west)
happy:sad- equipollent antonyms. Comparative forms are committed (happier presupposes happy, sadder presupposes sad), neither is impartial. Another indication that these are equipollent is that they describe emotions (pg 165-6).
polite:rude- overlapping antoyms (pg 166). One member yields an impartial comparative and the other a committed comparative:
He is rude, but more polite than you
?He is polite, but more rude than you
mortal:immortal- equipollent antonyms (see happy:sad). Additionally, in relation to polarity (pg 169-70): these display both:
- Morphological polarity: one term bears a negative affix and the other does not
- Privative polarity: one term is associated with the presence of something salient, and the other with its absence. In this case, the ability to die (or lack thereof) is the “something salient”
Here is a lesson from some dinosaurs about categories and the way we use words to create realities. The T-Rex brings to light the fact that we would have no problem calling a picture of a dinosaur a dinosaur. Likewise, we see a T-Rex and think "dinosaur" rather than "tyrannosaurus rex". This could be helpful as a review of how we construct categories for our upcoming in-class analysis.
http://www.qwantz.com/fanart/qwantz-semantics.png
One of the most interesting points from Chapter 15 was the idea of singular nouns with plural concord. The book states that some nouns (usually referring to a group of people) can go with either singular or plural verbs. Their example about the committee wearing hats shows that the group noun "committee" can be followed by are or is.
Here are (maybe?) some more examples of this semantic oddity:
the United States
the audience
the enemy
family
I think that these nouns take a plural verb when the members of the group are referred to individually and a singular verb when the group as a whole is referenced.
Ashley brought up Yogi Berra, who is of course well known for his comedic lexical creativity. One of my favorite Berra quips involves him ordering a pizza.
Supposedly, the waitress asks Berra if he would like his pizza cut into 4 slices or 8, to which he responds, "Better make it 4, I don't think I could eat 8."
Here, Berra is playing with logic and intuition. While the question posed was in reference to how big he liked his slices, his response changes the context to how many slices he can eat. He creates a paradoxical situation where a pizza sliced in either four or eight slices would result in the same sized slices.
It is interesting to me that Berra had I think a middle school education at best.
Performativity, which is more related to pragmatics than semantics in speech, is the idea that something one says can change or cause the existence of the object of the speech act. While watching the old sketch show "strangers with candy", I noticed a humorous take on a common performative speech act.
In the sketch, the class is made to pair off in couples to simulate being married for one week. Before the couples can begin their journeys, something must take place which defines these couples as married. In comes a priest in order to set things in motion. Because a necessary component of perfomativity is that the speaker/context must be correct in order to provide validity, a priest must pronounce these couples as married (by contrast, if the school principal said these words, they would not carry the same validity)
And so, the priest explains: "We are gathered here today in order to join these couples in fake matrimony. By the fake power vested in the very real me, I now pronounce you fake husband and fake wife."
Although this (and the rest of the episode) are meant to be a stark commentary on our society and the way we conduct ourselves in and out of marriage, it is nonetheless a good example of how performativity draws its power to make things a reality through speech from social and cultural contexts of appropriateness and certain specific phrasing.
In response to the class discussion about the news article on the colbert-stewart-conan "feud", it is noteworthy to add the idea of transitivity. This principle of logic was applied by all three hosts in the form of "the transitive property of Huckabee" to express their having created the other hosts' and thus the popularity of said presidential candidate. In our book, the problematic relationship between transitivity and hyponymy in language is explored. It seems that transitivity only works if you consider that all members of a category may not be prototypical. It is interesting to note that as GOE score goes up, cooperation with transitivity breaks down.
The following example from the book illustrates this:
A car seat is a type of seat.
A seat is a type of furniture.
*A car seat is a type of furniture
Here, because a car seat is not the prototypical member of the category "seat" the transitive assumption loses validity.
this scene from Hot Rod is an example of utterance similar to the goggles commercial seen in class. The phrase "cool beans" is repeated over and over in different ways. At first it means that the two characters have resolved an earlier conflict. Also note that "cool beans" is an idiomatic expression, as it does not really mean anything logical. Instead, its meaning is provided by context and learned association.
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