Link Posted: April 24, 2001
Due: For seniors, Thursday May 3 noon in my office mailbox, or 4:00 at Sid Rich 205.

For other undergraduates: Friday May 4 is the date I hope to have all the exams. Place it in my mailbox in Linguistics by noon or at 205 Sid Rich by 4:00 p.m. This gives you 10 days, which ought to be plenty of time to fit it in with your other exams. IF YOU CANNOT TURN IT IN BY THEN: please contact me and we can arrange another time. I can't take any exams after the last day of final exams, May 9, 4:00 p.m. in my mailbox in Linguistics or at Sid Rich 205. If you hand it in after May 4, I ask you to keep in contact with me about when and where you plan to hand it in.

If you foresee that you will not be able to turn it in by May 9, you will have to plan in advance and turn it in earlier, or you will have to ask me for an incomplete. I will grade the work I have seen up until May 9, so if you become ill and miss that deadline you will need to contact me or get someone to do so BY MAY 9. My home phone is (713) 348-1830.

If you choose to hand in the final remotely, then you are responsible for making sure there is a hardcopy in my mailbox. You might get a student you trust to print it out and put it in my box. I can't do the printing/assembling/stapling job for you.

Feel free to contact me for any other logistic issues about the final exam. I will be in town the rest of term except for Monday-Thursday April 30-May 3. (I'll be back the early evening of May 3.)

Honor Code policy: This is an open-book, open-notes, but closed-mouth exam. Work individually and not collaboratively, using your (hopefully) by now well-developed analytical capacity and understanding of the key concepts of the course.

Otherwise, this exam is like a homework. There is no requirement that you must do it all in one sitting.

You can test out data on native speakers of English from outside the class, barring linguists; but don't converse about the topics or share written work on them with each other.

Exams must be typed/computer-printed and in general look reasonably professional. Diagrams are fine as long as explained.

The exam is worth 1/6 of the total points for the course; in other words it is worth as much as one assignment.

Total points 100.

1. (35) The English words open and close are used in two closely related senses as in the examples given in (a) and (b).

(a) Sense 1:

I opened the box.
She opened the envelope and took out a letter.
We will open the office at 9:00.

I closed the suitcase.
Close the trunk and let's go.
The office is closed.

(b) Sense 2:
I opened the window and let some air in.
Open the lid and look inside.
He opened the shutters when it was light.

She closed the door softly.
Close the top tightly so no air gets in.
I closed the flap and taped it securely.

Briefly explain the semantics of open and close , and then describe as explicitly as you can the primary difference between Sense 1 and Sense 2. (The primary difference is the thing that all the (a) sentences have in common as against all the (b) sentences. )

The notions of frame and profiling will be useful; for example, what aspect of the frame is profiled by the direct objects in (a) and (b)?

A complete semantic analysis accounting for all possible objects of open/close is not necessary. Your characterizations of open and close should be schematic enough to fit the above data, and should be sufficient to allow you to describe the primary difference between (a) and (b).

NOTE:
There is some internal differentiation within each of the two senses, based on the type of entity opened/closed, and on differences between open and close (e.g. the obvious difference that makes them opposites, and/or other more subtle asymmetries between them.)

Don't let such differences distract you from the basic contrast between (a) and (b). Such differences may, however, figure in your brief semantic analysis. Notions like metaphor and metonymy may also be useful in discussing the semantics of these terms. You may even find that some of the examples sound odd to you, so that your semantic analysis for open or close might differ slightly from the simplest one consistent with the above data. If so, you can discuss this too.

Whatever other analysis you provide, be sure to address the primary semantic difference between (a) and (b).

Aim for 2-3 double-spaced pages for this part, maximum.

2. (65) Choose ONE of the following topics and write a coherent, well-structured essay on it. Use examples to illustrate your points. (Aim for about 4 double-spaced pages for this part.)

(i) All of the approaches to word meaning that we studied required breaking down the meaning into semantic properties ("features", "components", "attributes", etc.) Discuss how semantic properties of lexical items can be isolated or discovered, how they can be used to study the semantic relationships among words (whether word pairs or semantic fields), and (a) some of the problems one runs into in attempting to specify them, or (b) how you would consider them relevant to investigating topics such as language acquisition, language processing or language change. (65)

(ii) Cognitive Semantics includes the study of the following phenomena: