LING 107

SEMANTICS ASSIGNMENT

For this assignment, I would like you to write a description of your intuitions about the boundaries of the denotation of the word cup. Follow Labov’s procedures that I outlined in class to determine which factors affect your judgement about the denotation of cup. It will help to think of which factors are important for distinguishing cups from mugs, glasses, bowls, vases, etc. You should consult a dictionary for further leads. A significant part of this assignment will be to figure out a way of displaying your results in a graph or chart. Your graph should indicate how the factors you identify interact in determining the boundaries of the word. Be sure to include a discussion of your results and an explanation of how your graph captures (or fails to capture) these results. A further thought to ponder is the extent to which each of the defining factors you identify are themselves subject to contextual variation.

Labov, William. 1973. The boundaries of words and their meanings. In. Ralph W. Fasold (Ed.), Variation in the Form and Use of Language, pp. 29-62. Washington, DC: Georgetown U. Press.

This paper is due Feb. 2nd