Here is the handout on presupposition and the S-family test from today’s lecture:
HW5 (due F 3/8 @ 5pm by email or at my office)
Your fifth homework assignment is now available for download–just click on the link below for a PDF version. It will be due on Friday, March 8, at 5pm. Since we do not have a class meeting on Friday 3/8, please submit your assignment either via email, or by delivering a hard copy to my office. (Of course, you are also welcome to bring your completed assignment to our class meeting on Thursday, March 7.)
Reading for Tu 3/5 & Th 3/7: Kearns §2.3 (pgs. 32-39)
For next Tuesday 3/5 and Thursday 3/7, please read section 2.3 (pgs. 32-39) of the Kearns textbook. Next week, we will look at the language of predicate logic, which provides us with a means to represent meaning relations “below the sentence level”.
Midterm #1 answer key is now available
The answer key to your first midterm exam has now been posted to the “Readings” page.
HW4 (due Thurs. 2/28 @ beg. of class)
Your fourth homework assignment is now available for download–just click on the link below for a PDF version. It will be due on Thursday, February 28, at the beginning of class.
Reading for Th 2/28: Birner §5.5-5.6 (pgs. 163-172)
For next Thursday 2/28, please read sections 5.5-5.6 (pgs. 163-172) of the following book chapter, which is still available from the “Readings” section of this website:
Birner, Betty. 2012. Introduction to Pragmatics, Chap. 5 (‘Presupposition’). Malden, MA: Blackwel
Reading for Th 2/21: Birner §5.1-5.2 (pgs. 146-155)
For this Thursday 2/21, please read sections 5.1-5.2 (pgs. 146-155) of the following book chapter, which can be downloaded (PDF) from the “Readings” section of this website:
Birner, Betty. 2012. Introduction to Pragmatics, Chap. 5 (‘Presupposition’). Malden, MA: Blackwell.
HW3 Answer Key now available
The HW3 answer key is now available for download from the “Readings” section of this website.
Information regarding In-Class Exam #1 & Office Hours
Exam Date/Time/Location: Tuesday, February 19 / 12:30-2pm / CAS 324 (our usual classroom)
General Format & Guidelines: The exam will cover all of the material that we’ve looked at so far (see below for a list of topics). The individual questions will very much resemble what you have encountered in your first three homework assignments, though the questions will be structured in order to ensure that you can attempt the entire exam in the allotted time. (If you haven’t yet looked at the answer keys to the homework assignments, it would be a good idea to do so while studying for the exam. I will post the answer key to your third homework assignment by the end of this Friday (Feb. 15) evening.)
Our entailment tests, Grice’s maxims, and the truth tables for our PropL connectives will not be provided to you, so you should have all of this information committed to memory.
Office Hours: I will hold my regularly-scheduled office hours on this Friday, Feb. 15, from 11:30-1pm. I will also hold additional office hours on Monday, Feb. 18, from 4-5:30pm.
Topics that we’ve covered this semester (use this list as a guide when studying):
Constructing a Theory of Meaning: truth-conditional, compositional, and denotational theories of meaning; entailments and how to test for them
Literal Meaning vs. Utterance Meaning: entailments vs. conversational implicatures; the Cooperative Principle, Grice’s maxims, and pragmatic reasoning; types of implicatures (e.g., scalar)
Propositional Logic: translating between English & PropL; constructing truth tables for PropL formulas; semantic relations between sentences/formulas; understanding divergences between English & PropL
Handout on Semantic Relations Amongst PropL formulas
Here’s a PDF handout summarizing today’s class discussion of semantic relations amongst PropL formulas, and how they can be identified using truth tables. If your notes are incomplete, this should help to fill in the gaps: