Assignments

Exercises

ASSN # TOPICS QUESTIONS
1 Pragmatics and implicatures What implicatures is the second sentence of (38) predicted to have by the Neo-Gricean account we've outlined? (See "Pragmatics and implicatures" lecture note)
2 Chierchia's Puzzle and Sauerland's account Prove that the Sauerland-Exhaustivity Generalization is indeed predicted by Sauerland's theory. Solution (PDF)
3 Economy and embedded exhaustification Sauerland's system and the exhaustivity operator (PDF)
4 Presuppositions; introductory comments Construct lexical entries for or and if then, guided by the Strong Kleene and the Peters intuition as it was stated in the lecture notes.

Squib

Enrolled students are required to write a squib due at the end of the semester. In the unmarked case, the squib consists of critical discussion of an article (or a group of related articles) which is relevant to the topics covered in this class. It should include:

  • a clear and self-contained presentation of the main claims and arguments in the article(s)
  • an explanation of why and how they bear on issues discussed in class
  • problems, possible amendments, or further extensions and applications

Students are strongly encouraged to make appointments to talk about their thoughts throughout the semester (not just when squibs are due). A short squib proposal is due one month before the end of term, and the squib itself is due on the last class.