HW6 Answer Key and Score Distribution

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The HW6 answer key is now available.  Just as before, I’ve put the answer key in the password-protected “Readings” section of our website.  (Remember that the password is listed on the syllabus.)

HW6 Distribution (45 points total; 31 assignments submitted)

41-45…..13

36-40…..5

31-35…..7

26-30…..4

21-25…..2

Two Notes about HW6

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I sent a class-wide email with this information earlier, but I wanted to make it available on the class website too…

Two clarificatory notes about your homework assignment for tomorrow (Thursday, 10/22):

1.  In the Filtering conditions provided on page 2 of the assignment, S stands for complex sentences of
the form ‘If A, then B’ and ‘A and B’:

(i)  If A presupposes P, then ‘if A, then B’ and ‘A and B’ also presuppose P.
(ii)  If B presupposes P, then ‘if A, then B’ and ‘A and B’ also presuppose P unless A = P.

2.  In Section III, “Another Revision of the Filtering Conditions”, focus your attention on Part B.  That is, I
am most interested in knowing whether (10) presuppose (8f), and whether this presupposition is
affected by our background knowledge about John McCain.  In Part C, you should certainly state
whether your revised filtering conditions from Section II correctly predict the facts about (10), and you
should certainly attempt to revise them if they don’t.  But this revision is much trickier than the one I’ve
asked for in Section II, and so will be graded accordingly.

HW5 Answer Key and Score Distribution

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The HW5 answer key is now available.  Just as before, I’ve put the answer key in the password-protected “Readings” section of our website.  (Remember that the password is listed on the syllabus.)

HW5 Distribution (65 points total; 34 assignments submitted)

60-65…..6

55-59…..8

50-55…..6

45-49…..7

40-45…..3

0-39…..4

Handout on Presupposition: Diagnostics, Triggers, and Projection

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I’ve put together a handout summarizing some of the things that we’ve learned about presupposition so far, including the S-family test, various triggers, and presupposition projection.  I realized after today’s lecture that, given the complexity of the sentences that we were investigating today, probably some of you were unable to copy everything done.  So hopefully this handout will give you a chance to consolidate your understandings.

Handout on Presupposition: Diagnostics, Triggers, and Projection

HW4 Answer Key and Score Distribution

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The HW4 answer key is now available.  Just as before, I’ve put the answer key in the password-protected “Readings” section of our website. (Remember that the password is listed on the syllabus.)

Here’s the overall class performance on HW4…lots of high scores!

HW4 Distribution (65 points total; 34 assignments submitted)

Score…..# of Students

61-65…..17

56-60…..12

51-55…..3

46-50…..2

Reading for Th 10/15: Levinson 4.3.2 (191-198) (and optional Karttunen paper)

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The required reading for next Thursday’s class is section 4.3.2 of the Levinson chapter on Presupposition.  (You’ve already read sections 4.0-4.2; section 4.3.2 is part of the same PDF document.)

As I mentioned in today’s lecture, I’m also posting the following paper in the “Readings” section of the website, which is optional for next Thursday:

Karttunen, Lauri. 1973. “Presuppositions of Compound Sentences”.

The Karttunen paper addresses many of the same topics as the Levinson reading.  In fact, the Karttunen paper is the original source for these observations and ideas, and constitutes one of the landmark papers on presupposition in the linguistics literature.  For that reason, it’s worth having a look at it.  (Some of the example sentences are pretty fun too.)  The paper assumes nothing more than propositional logic, so all of us are now in a position to follow it.