one down

[fox]

That's Paper A finished, then.  Questions I did were:

1. Describe some of the inferences that can (and cannot) be drawn from the following sentences, and say how current semantic theory would deal with them:

John didn't manage to persuade Bill to give up smoking.
John is a taller man than Bill and Bill is a taller man than Fred.

2. Give an account, based on a concrete illustration, of what is involved in the linguistic act of telling a lie. In what ways does deliberately telling a lie differ from innocently failing to tell the truth?

3. Children do not "learn" their first language, they "grow" one. Discuss.

I think I did fairly well on the first one, even better on the second (in which, West Wing fans may or may not be pleased to hear, I quoted the following exchange:  "I've been reading about smallpox."  "The disease?"  "No, the dessert topping."), and well enough not to embarrass myself (hey, I mentioned Chomsky) on the third.  Now I'm going to change and then head to the library and refresh my memory further on morphology, which is the second of tomorrow's papers and of which I am frankly terrified.  (Phonology is tomorrow morning, and I'm not exactly sanguine about that either, but it's really the morphology that's scaring me.)