ANSWER KEY Semantics: a coursebook
Unit 9 Study Guide and Exercises
Directions: After you have read Unit 9 you should be able to tackle the following questions to
test your understanding of the main ideas raised in the unit.
1. You should understand these terms and concepts from this unit:
sense synthetic sentences
analytic sentences contradiction
set of sufficient conditions necessary condition
sense properties of sentences stereotype (feature)
2. Assume that John is the same person in each of the following sentences. Now, if the sentence
John is a bachelor is true, then is it true or false that
a. John is male. c. John is human.
b. John is unmarried. d. John is adult.
All of (2a-d) are true, according to the intuitions of a typical native speaker,
though 2d might be open to debate, depending on how adult is defined.
We can say that the sentence John is a bachelor entails (a-d), because the truth of (a-d)
necessarily follows from the proposition contained in the sentence John is a bachelor. The
notion of entailment will be explored in greater detail in Unit 10.
For questions 3-7 indicate whether each sentence is analytic, synthetic, or a contradiction. If
you are not sure about a sentence, try to explain why it is not a clear-cut case.
3. a. All bachelors are unmarried. Analytic
b. All bachelors are happy. Synthetic
c. All bachelors are married. Contradiction
Identification of the items in 3 seems reasonably clear-cut.
4. a. All misers are stingy. Analytic (?)
b. All misers are rich. Synthetic (?)
c. All misers waste money. Contradiction (?)
d. All misers are miserable. Synthetic (?)
The items in 4 are more problematic. The suggested answers are based on
most native speakers' intuitions about the meaning of miser, but are open to
debate.
5. a. All carnivores eat meat. Analytic (?)
b. All mammals produce live young. Analytic (?)
The items in 5 are also problematic. Pandas are classed by zoologists as
carnivores, but they only eat bamboo. Yet most animals classed as carnivores
do eat meat. Nearly all mammals do produce live young, and yet the platypus
lays eggs. Interpreting these sentences as analytic seems to be based on naïve
speaker knowledge rather than expert knowledge.
www.cambridge.org/hurford
© James R. Hurford, Brendan Heasley and Michael B. Smith 2007
ANSWER KEY Semantics: a coursebook
6. a. My unmarried sister is married to a bachelor. Contradiction
b. This stool has a broken back. Unclear
Labeling 6b depends on how stool is defined.
7. a. Kings are monarchs. Analytic
b. Kings are male. Analytic
c. Kings are fathers. Synthetic
d. George Washington was the first president. Synthetic
e. Witches are wicked. Synthetic
f. My brother is an only child. Contradiction
g. Puppies are human. Contradiction
Comment: 7d is synthetic because there are nations whose first president was
not George Washington. 7e is synthetic because there are some good witches,
such as Glenda the Good Witch in The Wizard of Oz.
8. Explain why synthetic sentences are potentially informative whereas analytic sentences and
contradictions are not.
Synthetic sentences are potentially informative because they contain
information that could be either true or false, depending on the circumstances.
If we are told that a particular king is also a father, for example, that is
informative, because there is nothing in the sense of king that makes specific
reference to this sort of information, which must be supplied by a particular
context. On the other hand, knowing that a king is a monarch is uninformative,
because the sense of king already contains the monarch notion within it. A
similar explanation could be given for contradictions.
9. Give some necessary conditions for the following lexical items:
a. table c. sister
b. car d. teacher
Answers will vary widely.
10. Is it possible to list a set of necessary and sufficient conditions to fully and adequately
characterize the lexical item mother? Try to come up with a couple such sets of conditions and
then explain why they are insufficient. (Hint: think of all the current terms which contain the
word mother, including birth mother, surrogate mother, stepmother, biological mother, adoptive
mother, natural mother, foster mother, unwed mother, genetic mother, etc.)
No. As with Wittgenstein's game example discussed in this unit, the concept of
mother is too complex, as shown by the many examples given above.
11. What is the difference between prototype and stereotype (or semantic feature) as set forth in
this unit?
A prototype is an actual entity in the extension of a predicate that is the most
central member. A stereotype is an abstract specification or list of typical
features of the prototype.
www.cambridge.org/hurford
© James R. Hurford, Brendan Heasley and Michael B. Smith 2007
