Practice with Sentential Semantics
1. Indicate for each of the following sentences whether it is analytic, synthetic or contradictory. For some you will have to imagine relevant situations.
1. That girl is her own mother's mother.
2. That boy is his own father's son.
3. Alice is Ken's sister.
4. Some typewriters are dusty.
5. If it breaks, it breaks.
6. John killed Bill, who remained alive for many years after.
From Semantics: A Coursebook, Hurford & Heasley
2A. Which of the following sentences can be judged to be true or false (i.e., as having a truth value)?
a. Do your homework!
b. If you don't do your homework, you will not do well in this class.
c. I warn you to do your homework.
d. I warned you to do your homework.
e. Will you do your homework?
B. For each of the sentences which you have judged not to have a truth value, give one set of circumstances under which they would be appropriate and describe the intent of the speaker in those circumstances.
EXAMPLE: Where is your car?
The speaker must have some appropriate interest in you or your car: thus if the speaker is a stranger, he or she must have some role which licenses the question (e.g., the stranger is a police officer). The addressee must be someone who (1) could reasonably be expected to have a car and (2) could be reasonably expected to know where it is (e.g., this utterance would be inappropriate if the addressee is a young child). The addressee must fill a role such that the speaker will expect that he or she would feel it appropriate to provide this information to the speaker (e.g., a superior officer would be unlikely to find this an appropriate utterance). The speaker is seeking specific information from the addressee about the location of the addressee's car.
3. Identify the thematic roles of each of the underlined noun phrases in the sentences below.
a. Mary took the new book from the discouraged salesman.
b. The discouraged salesman gave Mary the new book.
c. Did you see that man kick the dog?
d. I left the last assignment at home.
e. Oliver doesn't work with his hands.