Bài giảng Tiếng Anh Lớp 9 - Exercises on semantics 4

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1. EXERCISES ON SEMANTICS Mr. Anh
2. Exercise 39: Could the following possibly be used as referring expressions? Circle the answer of your choice. UNIT 4 (1) John Yes / No (2) My uncle Yes / No (3) and Yes / No (4) the girl sitting on the wall by the bus stop Yes / No (5) a man Yes / No (6) my parents Yes / No (7) send Yes / No (8) under Yes / No
3. Answer: (1) Yes (2) Yes (3) No (4) Yes (5) Yes, as in ‘A man was in here looking for you’. (6) Yes (My parents refers to a pair of things. For convenience at this point we use the idea of reference to include clearly delimited collections of things.) (7) No (8) No
4. Exercise 40: (1) When a speaker says, ‘A man was in here looking for you last night’ is a man being used to refer to a particular man? Yes / No (2) So, in the above example, is a man a referring expression? Yes / No (3) When a speaker says, ‘The first sign of the monsoon is a cloud on the horizon no bigger than a man’s hand’, is a man being used to refer to a particular man? Yes / No
5. (4) Is a man in this example a referring expression? Yes / No (5) Is forty buses, used in ‘Forty buses have been withdrawn from service by the Liverpool Corporation’, a referring expression? Yes / No (6) Is forty buses, used in ‘This engine has the power of forty buses’, a referring expression? Yes / No
6. Answer: (1) Yes (2) Yes (3) No (4) No (5) Yes, assuming that the speaker has 40 specific buses in mind (6) No
7. Exercise 41: Are the following referring expressions? (Imagine normal circumstances for the utterance.) (1) a Norwegian, used in ‘Nancy married a Norwegian’ Yes / No (2) a Norwegian, used in ‘Nancy wants to marry a Norwegian’ Yes / No (3) a car, used in ‘John is looking for a car’ Yes / No (4) a man with a limp, used in ‘Dick believes that a man with a limp killed Bo Peep’ Yes / No (5) a man with a limp, used in ‘A man with a limp killed Bo Peep’ Yes / No (6) a swan, used in ‘Every evening at sunset a swan flew over the house’ Yes / No
8. Answer: (1) Yes (2) Yes and No: the sentence is ambiguous. It depends on whether the speaker has in mind a particular person whom Nancy wants to marry. (3) Yes and No: the sentence is ambiguous. It depends on whether the speaker has a particular car in mind. (4) Yes and No (5) Yes, it can be. (6) Yes and No
9. Exercise 42: Are the following referring expressions? (Imagine normal circumstances for the utterances.) (1) John in ‘John is my best friend’ Yes / No (2) he in ‘He’s a very polite man’, said by a husband to his wife in a conversation about their bank manager Yes / No (3) it in ‘It’s sinking!’ used in a conversation about a battleship which has just been attacked Yes / No (4) the man who shot Abraham Lincoln in ‘The man who shot Abraham Lincoln was an unemployed actor’ Yes / No
10. Answer: (1) Yes (2) Yes (3) Yes (4) Yes
11. Exercise 43: Are the following expressions referring expressions? (1) he in ‘If anyone ever marries Nancy, he’s in for a bad time’ (meaning that whoever marries Nancy is in for a bad time) Yes / No (2) it in ‘Every man who owns a donkey beats it’ Yes / No (3) the person who did this in ‘The person who did this must be insane’, spoken by someone on discovering a brutally mutilated corpse, where the speaker has no idea who committed the crime Yes / No (4) Smith’s murderer in ‘Smith’s murderer must be insane’, uttered in circumstances like the above, where the corpse is Smith’s Yes / No
12. Answer: (1) No, the speaker has no particular individual in mind as Nancy’s possible future husband. (2) No, it doesn’t refer to any particular donkey here. (3) Not such a clear case, but it could be argued that the person who did this is not a referring expression in this example. (4) Similarly, an unclear case, but again it could be argued that Smith’s murderer is not a referring expression here.
13. Exercise 43: (1) Would the phrase the President of the United States used in a conversation about American politics in 2007 have the same referent as the expression the Leader of the Republican Party in the same conversation? Yes / No (2) Take the schematic utterance ‘X hasn’t a hope of winning the next election’. If we replace X by either ‘the President’ or ‘the Leader of the Republican Party’, will the two resultant utterances be equivalent in meaning, i.e. both describe exactly the same state of affairs? (Assume still the context of a conversation about American politics in 2007.) Yes / No
14. (3) Assume a situation in which John is standing alone in the corner. Would John and the person in the corner refer to the same individual in a conversation about this situation? Yes / No (4) In the conversation about the situation in which John is alone in the corner, would the following two utterances make exactly the same claim? ‘John looks as if he’s about to faint’ ‘The person in the corner looks as if he’s about to faint’ Yes / No
15. Answer: (1) Yes (2) Yes (3) Yes (4) Yes
16. Exercise 44: (1) In a conversation about a situation where John is standing alone in the corner, do ‘John’ and ‘the person in the corner’ have the same referent? Yes / No (2) Consider the following two utterances: ‘Dick believes that John killed Smith’ ‘Dick believes that the person in the corner killed Smith’ Assume that Dick does not know that John is the person in the corner; could one of these two utterances be true and the other false? Yes / No
17. (3) Is Dick believes that . . . killed Smith an opaque context? Yes / No (4) The Morning Star is the Evening Star: they are both in fact the planet Venus. Assuming that Nancy does not know this, do the following make the same claim about Nancy’s wishes? ‘Nancy wants to get married when the Morning Star is in the sky’ ‘Nancy wants to get married when the Evening Star is in the sky’ Yes / No (5) Is Nancy wants to get married when . . . is in the sky an opaque context? Yes / No
18. (6) Imagine a situation in which the last banana on the table is the prize in a game of charades, but that Gary, who came late to the party, is not aware of this. Do the following make the same claim in this situation? ‘Gary took the last banana’ ‘Gary took the prize’ Yes / No (7) Is Gary took . . . an opaque context? Yes / No
19. Answer: (1) Yes (2) Yes (3) Yes (4) No (5) Yes (6) Yes (7) No
20. Exercise 45: Are the following equative sentences? (1) John is the person in the corner Yes / No (2) Henry the Eighth is the current President of the USA Yes / No (3) Cairo is not the largest city in Africa Yes / No (4) Cairo is a large city Yes / No (5) Dr Jekyll is Mr Hyde Yes / No (6) Ted is an idiot Yes / No
21. Answer: (1) Yes (2) Yes, equative sentences can be false. (3) No (4) No, this sentence does not state identity of reference. (5) Yes (6) No
22. Good luck!