1. Word Sense disambiguation

For each of the following five words, characterize its senses in English, using some standard source as a guide, such as the American Heritage Dictionary or WordNet.

character
establishment
enormity
transpire
clear [the adjective]

If you feel that some of the source's senses should be merged, or new senses added, explain your reasoning briefly and use the altered list of senses.

Then select 10 genuine and different uses of the word in the returns from some web search engine, and assign each example to one of the available senses. (Avoid examples that talk about the word rather than using it, such as dictionary entries; avoid special cases such as brand names; and don't repeat examples if a page or a quotation is duplicated.)

Pick one of the words from the list, and briefly characterize the process(es) by which its various senses seem to have developed. You can use historical evidence from the Oxford English Dictionary (available from within Penn or via the library's web site) to help.

Example: for apprehension, the AHD gives

1. Fearful or uneasy anticipation of the future; dread.
2. The act of seizing or capturing; arrest.
3. The ability to apprehend or understand; understanding.

The first few examples from Google News today are:

US Congressman Pete Sessions (R-Dallas) this week introduced the Fugitive Apprehension[2] Assistance Act of 2005.
Apprehension[1] of starvation in adjoining areas of Neelum Valley
He was arrested in Jamaica recently by the Fugitive Apprehension[2] Team.
An application has been filed ... to have Mr. Justice Ted Matlow removed from the case because his actions ... create "a reasonable apprehension[1] of bias."

The etymological meaning of apprehension is "the action of seizing". It was originally applied to mental rather than physical processes (i.e. "understanding" as mentally "grasping"), because when it was borrowed into English through French from Latin, there were native words in common use for the physical processes. The meaning "dread" was a particularization of more general understanding of future possibilities. The physical sense has been used mainly as a legal term of art.

2. Two meanings

Rep. Tom DeLay, a conservative politician who has been indicted for campaign finance violations, recently asserted in a letter to his constituents and contributors that "We are witnessing the criminalization of conservative politics."

Josh Marshall, a liberal political commentator, remarked: "Seems to me that sentence can be read more than one way."

What are the two meanings that Marshall probably has in mind?

Briefly explain how the ambiguity arises, indicating whether the difference is a matter of word sense ambiguity, syntactic ambiguity, semantic interpretation ambiguity, pragmatic ambiguity, or some combination of these.

Hints:

(1) If criminalization were a verb, what would its subject be?
(2) Read this.

3. Conversational Implicature

Consider the following Q&A from Patrick J. Fitzgerald's 10/28/2005 news conference:

QUESTION: Mr. Fitzgerald, do you have evidence that the vice president of the United States, one of Mr. Libby's original sources for this information, encouraged him to leak it or encouraged him to lie about leaking?

FITZGERALD: I'm not making allegations about anyone not charged in the indictment.
Now, let me back up, because I know what that sounds like to people if they're sitting at home.
We don't talk about people that are not charged with a crime in the indictment.
I would say that about anyone in this room who has nothing to do with the offenses.
We make no allegation that the vice president committed any criminal act. We make no allegation that any other people who provided or discussed with Mr. Libby committed any criminal act.
But as to any person you asked me a question about other than Mr. Libby, I'm not going to comment on anything.
Please don't take that as any indication that someone has done something wrong. That's a standard practice. If you followed me in Chicago, I say that a thousand times a year. And we just don't comment on people because we could start telling, Well, this person did nothing wrong, this person did nothing wrong, and then if we stop commenting, then you'll start jumping to conclusions. So please take no more.

Explain in terms of HP Grice's theory of conversational implicature why Fitzgerald felt he had to say "Now, let me back up, because I know what that sounds like", etc. etc.