1.3.x. Exercise questions

1. For each of the following sentences, give a sentence it implies and a sentence it implicates (but does not imply) in the context described:
  a. My plate is clean, as reported by a small boy who has been told to finish his vegetables by a parent saying, Clean your plate.
  b. There is a cooler in the trunk, said in reply to someone’s expressed wish to have a beer.
  c. I saw the director’s last movie, said in reply to someone who asked whether the speaker has seen a certain new movie.
2. Many philosophers would argue that the sentence I’m Adam, when true, expresses the same proposition as I’m me (I’m I if you prefer) or Adam is Adam; that is, if it is true at all, it is true in every logically possible world. Tell how the phenomenon of indexicality or deixis could help to explain how I’m Adam could be informative even if these philosophers are correct and it expresses a tautology if it is true at all. What information can be derived from a sentence like I’m Adam?
3. J. L. Austin, the philosopher who made people aware of the variety and importance of speech acts, suggested a way of identifying them. Look for verbs that can fit in the context I hereby ... (e.g., I hereby assert that ... or I hereby apologize)—that is (in grammarians’ jargon), verbs which can be used in first person indicative active sentences in the simple present tense along with the adverb hereby. Austin suggested that there are such verbs (he called them performative verbs) for most speech acts (and that they number on the order of 103). Find half a dozen as varied in character as possible.
Glen Helman 25 Aug 2005