We talked a bit about tall and the fact that it really seems to mean something like “tall as compared to other things of the same sort.” And it came up that even something like red is probably relative too (cf. red hair vs. red paint). But for the purposes of the homework, you can …
Continue reading ‘HW4: May as well treat “boring” as absolute’ »
Ok, so this is in fact one of the questions on the homework, but there has been a certain amount of confusion surrounding this one. So, let me walk you almost all the way up to it. Here’s the general plot: We used to treat is boring as being an intransitive verb, but that’s clearly …
Continue reading ‘HW4: How do I write the semantic value for “is”?’ »
Here’s a question not specifically about this homework that I’ve gotten a couple of times over the past couple of days: What does √ really mean as a homework score? I have been grading the homeworks on essentially a five point scale, which are given in symbols as a mark between √++ (doubleplusgood) and √−− …
Continue reading ‘Homework, generally: What is a “check”?’ »
So, I have gotten a few questions about homework #4 throughout the day, but I haven’t had a chance to post anything about them due to a very crowded schedule. I will post a few comments now at least. First, though: if you have questions about something, don’t think you’re alone just because the blog …
I see that in my definition of “tall” on handout 4b, I left out something relatively important. The definition should be: [tall]M = λP[λx[P(x) ∧ x is tall compared to {y:P(y)} in M]] The important difference between what is on the handout and what I have here is that the definition here requires not only …
It’s been called to my attention that there is a typo on the key I gave out for Homework 2. A new version will be posted online shortly, but the changes are few, so you might just pencil it into your copy. Addition: The error goes back a bit further than I originally thought, the …
Continue reading ‘HW2 Key: Typo at the end of Part 1, (3)’ »
On the sentence structures that you were supposed to draw for parts of homeworks 2 and 3, I had you number the nodes. But, just to clarify: there’s no secret, magic, or rules behind my choice of what number to assign to which node. I generally started from 1, and I started at the bottom, …
On Wednesday this week (9/27) I need to shift my office hours ahead a bit, so they will be from 11am-12:30pm. Next Wednesday they’ll return to 12-1.
My new office hours will be: Tuesdays and Thursdays 4-5pm Wednesdays 12-1pm (I have moved the Friday office hours to Wednesday.) As before, if you want to set up a meeting with me outside of those times, just let me know and it can probably be arranged.
Just as a note of reassurance, there are still things to cover tomorrow that are relevant to the homework. Don’t despair if you look at it and feel that you don’t quite know how it should work. You probably don’t, and that’s probably to be expected, given that it has not yet all been presented …