Homework 6: Modifiers

Consider the sentences in (1) and (2):

1. a. Kim is a doctor.
   b. Kim is American.
   c. Kim is from Chicago.
2. a. Kim is an American doctor.
   b. Kim is a doctor from Chicago.
   c. Kim is an American doctor from Chicago.

I. State all of the entailment relations that hold between the sentences in (2) and those in (1).

II. We have assumed that the underlined expressions in (1) all have denotations of type <e,t>. (Remember that we have been pretending that the verb be throughout and the determiner a in predicate nominals are not really there. Continue with this pretension.) This assumption creates a problem for the analysis of adjectives and PPs when used as noun modifiers in the examples in (2). Explain what the problem is.

III. Propose a solution to this problem, and support your analysis by showing that it correctly captures the entailments that you documented in Part I.