Honor Code policy: As before, you are free to discuss the assignment orally with others taking the class, but do not share written analyses with one another, or use writing in your discussions. You can also test out data on native speakers of English from outside the class, barring linguists.

Assignments must be typed/computer-printed and in general look reasonably professional. Hand-drawn (or computer-drawn) diagrams are fine; just explain any diagrams or pictorial matter in the text of your answer.

(1 problem, total points: 40)

Idealized Cognitive Models (ICMs), sometimes called Frames, are thought to structure experience and provide a coherent backdrop for categorization and for reasoning about situations. ICMs have an often complex, but internally coherent, gestalt-like structure, with particular structural characteristics like specified roles, orderings of various kinds, and other kinds of internal relations of the parts of the model. Many ICMs are social and cultural in nature, and thus also incorporate information that refers to typical or expected behaviors, attitudes, and so forth, that are characteristic of a given culture.

Many lexical sets involve semantic relationships that can best be understood in terms of an ICM. For example, the lexical set represented by the terms in the domain 'U.S. Army rank' (general - colonel - major - captain - lieutenant) presupposes a culturally-defined ICM, with particular structural properties (e.g. ordering with respect to a particular dimensional cluster) as well as a good deal of cultural, social, and behavioral information. Both structural and sociocultural information are necessary for the full characterization of the lexical semantics of the set.

Describe the lexical semantics of the following set in terms of a cultural ICM, in as much detail as you can.

Sunday - Monday - Tuesday - Wednesday - Thursday - Friday - Saturday.

First, specify the various structural properties of the ICM, and name or describe the most crucial semantic domain or dimension which these words make reference to.

Then, go beyond the structural principle, and fill in the cultural backdrop to the frame. Describe the aspects of the meanings of the terms that you feel are widely shared in North American (or European) culture, rather than those meaning aspects that are idiosyncratic to you or your family. (If you are talking about a non-North American culture, please specify what culture.)

To help you get started, you can think about the kinds of information you would have to give a person from a very different culture. Or, think about what information you would have to build into an artificial intelligence system so that it could interpret words like Tuesday. (But don't try to give the information in computer language!) Take whatever tack leads you towards understanding and systematically explaining the lexical semantics of the words for the days of the week in North American or European culture.

© 2004 Suzanne Kemmer