Switch to: References

Citations of:

Genericity: An Introduction

In Greg N. Carlson & Francis Jeffry Pelletier (eds.), The Generic Book. University of Chicago Press. pp. 1--124 (1995)

Add citations

You must login to add citations.
  1. Representation of Principled Connections: A Window Onto the Formal Aspect of Common Sense Conception.Sandeep Prasada & Elaine M. Dillingham - 2009 - Cognitive Science 33 (3):401-448.
    Nominal concepts represent things as tokens of types. Recent research suggests that we represent principled connections between the type of thing something is (e.g., DOG) and some of its properties (k‐properties; e.g., having four legs for dogs) but not other properties (t‐properties; e.g., being brown for dogs). Principled connections differ from logical, statistical, and causal connections. Principled connections license (i) the expectation that tokens of the type will generally possess their k‐properties, (ii) formal explanations (i.e., explanation of the presence of (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   40 citations  
  • Generic passages.Greg N. Carlson & Beverly Spejewski - 1997 - Natural Language Semantics 5 (2):101-165.
    This paper examines a type of discourse structure we here call ‘generic passages’. We argue that generic passages should be analyzed as sequences of generic sentences, each sentence containing its own GEN operator (Krifka et al. 1995). The GEN operators produce tripartite matrix/restrictor structures; the main discourse connection among the sentences is that the restrictor produced by each sentence in the sequence has as its contents the information in the matrix produced by the previous sentence in the discourse. We also (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  • Conceptual distinctions amongst generics.Sandeep Prasada, Sangeet Khemlani, Sarah-Jane Leslie & Sam Glucksberg - 2013 - Cognition 126 (3):405-422.
    Generic sentences (e.g., bare plural sentences such as “dogs have four legs” and “mosquitoes carry malaria”) are used to talk about kinds of things. Three experiments investigated the conceptual foundations of generics as well as claims within the formal semantic approaches to generics concerning the roles of prevalence, cue validity and normalcy in licensing generics. Two classes of generic sentences that pose challenges to both the conceptually based and formal semantic approaches to generics were investigated. Striking property generics (e.g. “sharks (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   37 citations  
  • Imperfective and Perfective Habituals in Polish: A Bi-Directional OT Account of Variation and Ambiguity. [REVIEW]Dorota Klimek-Jankowska - 2012 - Journal of Logic, Language and Information 21 (1):31-52.
    This study accounts for the observed patterns of variation and ambiguity in the expression and interpretation of aspect in bare habitual statements in Polish in the framework of Bouma’s ( 2008 ) recent version of stratified bi-directional Optimality Theory (OT).
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • A Handbook for Language Engineers.Matthew Stone - unknown
    cal practice: the enterprise of specifying information about the world for use in computer systems. Knowledge representation as a field also encompasses conceptual results that call practitioners’ attention to important truths about the world, mathematical results that allow practitioners to make these truths precise, and computational results that put these truths to work. This chapter surveys this practice and its results, as it applies to the interpretation of natural language utterances in implemented natural language processing systems. For a broader perspective (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • Knowledge of Meaning, Conscious and Unconscious.Steven Gross - 2010 - The Baltic International Yearbook of Cognition, Logic and Communication.
    This paper motivates two bases for ascribing propositional semantic knowledge (or something knowledgelike): first, because it’s necessary to rationalize linguistic action; and, second, because it’s part of an empirical theory that would explain various aspects of linguistic behavior. The semantic knowledge ascribed on these two bases seems to differ in content, epistemic status, and cognitive role. This raises the question: how are they related, if at all? The bulk of the paper addresses this question. It distinguishes a variety of answers (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • Specifying Desires.Delia Graff Fara - 2012 - Noûs 47 (2):250-272.
    A report of a person's desire can be true even if its embedded clause underspecifies the content of the desire that makes the report true. It is true that Fiona wants to catch a fish even if she has no desire that is satisfied if she catches a poisoned minnow. Her desire is satisfied only if she catches an edible, meal-sized fish. The content of her desire is more specific than the propositional content of the embedded clause in our true (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   46 citations  
  • Durative Achievements and Individual-Level Predicates on Events.Kate Kearns - 2003 - Linguistics and Philosophy 26 (5):595 - 635.
    Ryle (1949, Chapter V) discusses a range of predicates which in different ways exemplify a property I shall call quasi-duality - they appear to report two actions or events in one predicate. Quasi-duality is the key property of predicates Ryle classed as achievements. Ryle's criteria for classification were not temporal or aspectual, and Vendler's subsequent adoption of the term achievement for the aktionsart of momentary events changes the term - Rylean achievements and Vendlerian achievements are in principle different classes. Nevertheless, (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   3 citations  
  • Water and Ice.Adam Sennet - 2006 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 72 (3):629 - 634.
    (I) In Beyond Rigidity, Scott Soames argues that the term ‘water’ is ambiguous. On one disambiguation, it is an expansive predicate that is true of any quantity of H2O whatsoever. On a second disambiguation, it is a restricted predicate, true only of liquid quantities of H2O. Analytic philosophers are fond of claiming ambiguities where there are none. This, I shall argue, is the case with the claimed expansive‐restricted ambiguity. The predicate‐kind ambiguity I have no quibble with.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • Tugenden und Absichten.Boris Hennig - 2008 - Philosophisches Jahrbuch 115 (1):165-182.
    Psychological experiments show that human behavior is often determined by features of the situation rather than general and persistent character traits of the agent. Therefore, it may seem naive to suppose that someone with a virtuous character will in general act virtuously. This is at least true if a character trait is taken to be a persistent characteristic or property that reliably causes certain behavior. On the basis of the conception of agency developed by Anscombe in Intention, I will argue (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  • Deterministic Chance.Antony Eagle - 2010 - Noûs 45 (2):269 - 299.
    I sketch a new constraint on chance, which connects chance ascriptions closely with ascriptions of ability, and more specifically with 'CAN'-claims. This connection between chance and ability has some claim to be a platitude; moreover, it exposes the debate over deterministic chance to the extensive literature on (in)compatibilism about free will. The upshot is that a prima facie case for the tenability of deterministic chance can be made. But the main thrust of the paper is to draw attention to the (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   28 citations  
  • On generics.Anna Papafragou - unknown
    In this paper I argue against previous approaches to the semantics of generics which involved the notions of prototype, stereotype and relevant quantification. I assume that the logical form of generics includes a generic operator which, as Heim (1992) has suggested, can be construed as the modal operator of necessity. After demonstrating that the presence of the generic operator in a semantic representation, as well as its domain of quantification, are pragmatically supplied, I go on to show how the various (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  • What should default reasoning be, by default?Jeff Pelletier - unknown
    This is a position paper concerning the role of empirical studies of human default reasoning in the formalization of AI theories of default reasoning. We note that AI motivates its theoretical enterprise by reference to human skill at default reasoning, but that the actual research does not make any use of this sort of information and instead relies on intuitions of individual investigators. We discuss two reasons theorists might not consider human performance relevant to formalizing default reasoning: (a) that intuitions (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   10 citations  
  • Generics and the ways of normality.Bernhard Nickel - 2008 - Linguistics and Philosophy 31 (6):629-648.
    I contrast two approaches to the interpretation of generics such as ‘ravens are black:’ majority-based views, on which they are about what is the case most of the time, and inquiry-based views, on which they are about a feature we focus on in inquiry. I argue that majority-based views face far more systematic counterexamples than has previously been supposed. They cannot account for generics about kinds with multiple characteristic properties, such as ‘elephants live in Africa and Asia.’ I then go (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   57 citations  
  • Generalizing Detached Self-Reference and the Semantics of Generic One.Friederike Moltmann - 2010 - Mind and Language 25 (4):440-473.
    In this paper I will give an analysis of what I call ‘generalizing detached self-reference’ within a general account of reference to the first person. With generalizing detached self-reference an agent attributes properties to a range of individuals by putting himself into their shoes, or simulating them. I will show that generalizing detached self-reference plays an important role in the semantics of natural language, in particular in the English generic one and in what syntacticians call arbitrary PRO.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   11 citations  
  • Relative Truth and the First Person.Friederike Moltmann - 2010 - Philosophical Studies 150 (2):187-220..
    In recent work on context­dependency, it has been argued that certain types of sentences give rise to a notion of relative truth. In particular, sentences containing predicates of personal taste and moral or aesthetic evaluation as well as epistemic modals are held to express a proposition (relative to a context of use) which is true or false not only relative to a world of evaluation, but other parameters as well, such as standards of taste or knowledge or an agent. Thus, (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   58 citations  
  • Functional similarities between bimanual coordination and topic/comment structure.Manfred Krifka - manuscript
    While language is presumably unique to humans, there are possible pre-linguistic features that developed in the course of human evolution which predate features of language, and might have even been essential for its evolution. A number of such possible preadaptations for human language have been discussed, like the permanent lowering of the larynx, the ability to control one’s breath, or the inclination of humans to imitate. In this paper I would like to point out another candidate for a preadaptation, namely (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  • Licensing and sensitivity in polarity items: From downward entailment to (non)veridicality.Anastasia Giannakidou - manuscript
    Polarity phenomena in language are pervasive and quite diverse. A quite familiar polarity item (PI) is any. Any a PI because it exhibits limited distribution: it is ungrammatical in positive sentences, but becomes fine with negation, in questions, with modal verbs, and in the scope of downward entailing quantifiers like few.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   13 citations  
  • Events and Event Talk: An Introduction.Fabio Pianesi & Achille C. Varzi - 2000 - In James Higginbotham, Fabio Pianesi & Achille C. Varzi (eds.), Speaking of events. New York: Oxford University Press. pp. 3–47.
    A critical review of the main themes arising out of recent literature on the semantics of ordinary event talk. The material is organized in four sections: (i) the nature of events, with emphasis on the opposition between events as particulars and events as universals; (ii) identity and indeterminacy, with emphasis on the unifier/multiplier controversy; (iii) events and logical form, with emphasis on Davidson’s treatment of the form of action sentences; (iv) linguistic applications, with emphasis on issues concerning aspectual phenomena, the (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   18 citations  
  • Causal structuralism, dispositional actualism, and counterfactual conditionals.Antony Eagle - 2009 - In Toby Handfield (ed.), Dispositions and causes. New York : Oxford University Press,: Clarendon Press ;. pp. 65--99.
    Dispositional essentialists are typically committed to two claims: that properties are individuated by their causal role (‘causal structuralism’), and that natural necessity is to be explained by appeal to these causal roles (‘dispositional actualism’). I argue that these two claims cannot be simultaneously maintained; and that the correct response is to deny dispositional actualism. Causal structuralism remains an attractive position, but doesn’t in fact provide much support for dispositional essentialism.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   14 citations  
  • (In)Definiteness, Polarity, and the Role of wh-morphology in Free Choice.Anastasia Giannakidou & Lisa Cheng - 2006 - Journal of Semantics 23 (2):135-183.
    In this paper we reconsider the issue of free choice and the role of the wh-morphology employed in it. We show that the property of being an interrogative wh-word alone is not sufficient for free choice, and that semantic and sometimes even morphological definiteness is a pre-requisite for some free choice items (FCIs) in certain languages, e.g. in Greek and Mandarin Chinese. We propose a theory that explains the polarity behaviour of FCIs cross-linguistically, and allows indefinite (Giannakidou 2001) as well (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   14 citations  
  • Descriptions as predicates.Delia Graff Fara - 2001 - Philosophical Studies 102 (1):1-42.
    Although Strawson’s main aim in “On Referring” was to argue that definite descriptions can be used referentially – that is, “to mention or refer to some individual person or single object . . . , in the course of doing what we should normally describe as making a statement about that person [or] object” (1950, p. 320) – he denied that definite descriptions are always used referentially. The description in ‘Napoleon was the greatest French soldier’ is not used referentially, says (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   83 citations  
  • Dispositions and habituals.Michael Fara - 2005 - Noûs 39 (1):43–82.
    Objects have dispositions. As Nelson Goodman put it, “a thing is full of threats and promises”. But sometimes those threats go unfulfilled, and the promises unkept. Sometimes the dispositions of objects fail to manifest themselves, even when their conditions of manifestation obtain. Pieces of wood, disposed to burn when heated, do not burn when heated in a vacuum chamber. And pastries, disposed to go bad when left lying around too long, won’t do so if coated with lacquer and put on (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   147 citations  
  • Number marking and (in)definiteness in kind terms.Veneeta Dayal - 2004 - Linguistics and Philosophy 27 (4):393-450.
    This paper explores the link between number marking and(in)definiteness in nominals and their interpretation. Differencesbetween bare singulars and plurals in languages without determinersare explained by treating bare nominals as kind terms. Differencesarise, it is argued, because singular and plural kinds relatedifferently to their instantiations. In languages with determiners,singular kinds typically occur with the definite determiner, butplural/mass kinds can be bare in some languages and definite inothers. An account of singular kinds in terms of taxonomic readingsis proposed, with number marking playing (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   33 citations  
  • Aspect, quantification and when-clauses in italian.Andrea Bonomi - 1997 - Linguistics and Philosophy 20 (5):469-514.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   10 citations  
  • Generic Excluded Middle.James Ravi Kirkpatrick - forthcoming - Philosophers' Imprint.
    There is a standard quantificational view of generic sentences according to which they have a tripartite logical form involving a phonologically null generic operator called 'Gen'. Recently, a number of theorists have questioned the standard view and revived a competing proposal according to which generics involve the predication of properties to kinds. This paper offers a novel argument against the kind-predication approach on the basis of the invalidity of Generic Excluded Middle, a principle according to which any sentence of the (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • Why use generic language in science?Olivier Lemeire - forthcoming - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science.
    Scientists often communicate using generic generalizations, which are unquantified generalizations such as ‘Americans overestimate social class mobility’ or ‘sound waves carry gravitational mass’. In this paper, I explain the role of such generic generalizations in science, based on a novel theory about their characteristic meaning. According to this theory, a scientific generalization of the form ‘Ks are F’ says that F is one property based on which category K qualifies as a scientific kind. Because what it takes to qualify as (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  • Names are not (always) predicates.Laura Delgado - 2024 - Mind and Language 39 (3):330-347.
    A main selling point of predicativism is that, in addition to accounting for predicative uses of proper names, it can successfully account for their referential uses while treating them as predicates, thus providing a uniform semantics for proper names. The strategy is to postulate an unpronounced determiner that is realised with names when they appear to function as singular terms, making them effectively a concealed determiner phrase. I argue against the thesis that names are really predicates in referential uses. I (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • Generics and Epistemic Injustice.Martina Rosola & Federico Cella - 2020 - Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 23 (5):739-754.
    In this paper, we argue that, although neglected so far, there is a strong link between generics and testimonial injustice. Testimonial injustice is a form of epistemic injustice that “occurs when prejudice causes a hearer to give a deflated level of credibility to a speaker’s word”. Generics are sentences that express generalizations about a category or about its members without specifying what proportion of the category members possess the predicated property. We argue that generics are especially suited to cause testimonial (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   5 citations  
  • Developmental Changes in Strategies for Gathering Evidence About Biological Kinds.Emily Foster-Hanson, Kelsey Moty, Amanda Cardarelli, John Daryl Ocampo & Marjorie Rhodes - 2020 - Cognitive Science 44 (5):e12837.
    How do people gather samples of evidence to learn about the world? Adults often prefer to sample evidence from diverse sources—for example, choosing to test a robin and a turkey to find out if something is true of birds in general. Children below age 9, however, often do not consider sample diversity, instead treating non‐diverse samples (e.g., two robins) and diverse samples as equivalently informative. The current study (N = 247) found that this discontinuity stems from developmental changes in standards (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  • Taste, traits, and tendencies.Alexander Dinges & Julia Zakkou - 2021 - Philosophical Studies 178 (4):1183-1206.
    Many experiential properties are naturally understood as dispositions such that e.g. a cake tastes good to you iff you are disposed to get gustatory pleasure when you eat it. Such dispositional analyses, however, face a challenge. It has been widely observed that one cannot properly assert “The cake tastes good to me” unless one has tried it. This acquaintance requirement is puzzling on the dispositional account because it should be possible to be disposed to like the cake even if this (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   4 citations  
  • Generic Generalizations.Sarah-Jane Leslie & Adam Lerner - 2016 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   31 citations  
  • Deriving the contrastiveness of contrastive -nun in Korean.Jieun Kim - 2018 - Linguistics and Philosophy 41 (4):457-482.
    The Korean particle -nun combined with an accent indicates contrast :269–320, 1972; Heycock, in: Merce Proceedings of NELS, vol 24, pp 159–187, 1993; in: Miyagawa, Saito Handbook of Japanese linguistics, Oxford University Press, Cambridge, 2007; Hara, in: Dekker, Franke Fifteenth Amsterdam colloquium, Universiteit van Amsterdam, pp 101–106, 2006; Lee, in: Lee, Gordon, Büring Topic and focus: meaning and intonation from a crosslinguistic perspective. Springer, Berlin, 2003; Tomioka, in: Zimmermann, Fery Information structure, Oxford University Press, Cambridge, pp 115–138, 2009, among many (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • Knowing in the “Executive Way”: Knowing How, Rules, Methods, Principles and Criteria.N. Waights Hickman - 2018 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 99 (2):311-335.
    I advance a variety of intellectualism about knowing-how that is, paradoxically, suggested by Ryle's positive discussions of that phenomenon. I discuss the roots of the view in Ryle's work, its affinity with John Hyman's () view of factual knowledge, and important points of contrast with Stanley and Williamson's () proposal. Drawing on work by Cath () and Wiggins () I also discuss conditions on knowing practically, in ‘the executive way’, as an alternative to appealing to practical modes of presentation.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   19 citations  
  • The Meaning of Generics.Rachel Katharine Sterken - 2017 - Philosophy Compass 12 (8):e12431.
    This article discusses recent theories of the meaning of generics. The discussion is centred on how the theories differ in their approach to addressing the primary difficulty in providing a theory of generic meaning: The notoriously complex ways in which the truth conditions of generics seem to vary. In addition, the article summarizes considerations for and against each theory.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   18 citations  
  • Are stereotypes accurate? A perspective from the cognitive science of concepts.Lin Bian & Andrei Cimpian - 2017 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 40.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   4 citations  
  • Experience, evaluation and faultless disagreement.Alex Anthony - 2016 - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 59 (6):686-722.
    In the last decade there has been a torrent of work at the intersection of philosophy and linguistics on predicates of personal taste, subjective expressions like fun and tasty that are used to express opinions rather than matters of fact. In each section of this paper I discuss a phenomenon that has been largely overlooked in the literature on PPTs. In Section 1, I identify a neglected experiential reading of these adjectives. All other theories of expressions like fun take them (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   9 citations  
  • Differences in the Evaluation of Generic Statements About Human and Non‐Human Categories.Arber Tasimi, Susan Gelman, Andrei Cimpian & Joshua Knobe - 2017 - Cognitive Science 41 (7):1934-1957.
    Generic statements express generalizations about categories. Current theories suggest that people should be especially inclined to accept generics that involve threatening information. However, previous tests of this claim have focused on generics about non-human categories, which raises the question of whether this effect applies as readily to human categories. In Experiment 1, adults were more likely to accept generics involving a threatening property for artifacts, but this negativity bias did not also apply to human categories. Experiment 2 examined an alternative (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   5 citations  
  • Necessary Connections in Context.Alex Kaiserman - 2017 - Erkenntnis 82 (1):45-64.
    This paper combines the ancient idea that causes necessitate their effects with Angelika Kratzer’s semantics of modality. On the resulting view, causal claims quantify over restricted domains of possible worlds determined by two contextually determined parameters. I argue that this view can explain a number of otherwise puzzling features of the way we use and evaluate causal language, including the difference between causing an effect and being a cause of it, the sensitivity of causal judgements to normative facts, and the (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   10 citations  
  • The man without properties.Boris Hennig - 2017 - Synthese 194 (6).
    Contemporary philosophical logic rests on a distinction between things and properties. Properties are thought to differ from things in that their proper expression is incomplete or unsaturated. In this paper, I will argue that Aristotle did not distinguish between things and properties in this way. I will show, first, that Aristotle’s essences are not properties, and that certain passages in Aristotle make sense only if we do not take accidents to be properties either. The notion of a property is thus (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  • The Biconditional Doctrine: Contra Kölbel on a “Dogma” of Davidsonian Semantics.Steven Gross - 2005 - Erkenntnis 62 (2):189-210.
    Should a theory of meaning state what sentences mean, and can a Davidsonian theory of meaning in particular do so? Max Kölbel answers both questions affirmatively. I argue, however, that the phenomena of non-homophony, non-truth-conditional aspects of meaning, semantic mood, and context-sensitivity provide prima facie obstacles for extending Davidsonian truth-theories to yield meaning-stating theorems. Assessing some natural moves in reply requires a more fully developed conception of the task of such theories than Kölbel provides. A more developed conception is also (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  • Mass nouns and plural logic.David Nicolas - 2008 - Linguistics and Philosophy 31 (2):211-244.
    A dilemma put forward by Schein (1993) and Rayo (2002) suggests that, in order to characterize the semantics of plurals, we should not use predicate logic, but non-singular logic, a formal language whose terms may refer to several things at once. We show that a similar dilemma applies to mass nouns. If we use predicate logic and sets, we arrive at a Russellian paradox when characterizing the semantics of mass nouns. Likewise, a semantics of mass nouns based upon predicate logic (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   17 citations  
  • A Presuppositional Account of Causal and Temporal Interpretations of and.Joanna Blochowiak - 2016 - Topoi 35 (1):93-107.
    Despite extensive studies, the issue concerning the pragmatic mechanisms leading to causal and temporal interpretations of and remains problematic and has not yet been addressed in its totality within one framework. This paper proposes a solution based on presuppositional mechanisms built into a comprehensive analysis that accounts for both the various interpretations of and-sentences as well as those of other types of sentences involving similar interpretations. This account is a specific part of a unified solution to the knotty problem of (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  • Children's Developing Intuitions About the Truth Conditions and Implications of Novel Generics Versus Quantified Statements.Amanda C. Brandone, Susan A. Gelman & Jenna Hedglen - 2015 - Cognitive Science 39 (4):711-738.
    Generic statements express generalizations about categories and present a unique semantic profile that is distinct from quantified statements. This paper reports two studies examining the development of children's intuitions about the semantics of generics and how they differ from statements quantified by all, most, and some. Results reveal that, like adults, preschoolers recognize that generics have flexible truth conditions and are capable of representing a wide range of prevalence levels; and interpret novel generics as having near-universal prevalence implications. Results further (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   10 citations  
  • Topic, Focus, and the Interpretation of Bare Plurals.Ariel Cohen & Nomi Erteschik-Shir - 2002 - Natural Language Semantics 10 (2):125-165.
    In this paper we show that focus structure determines the interpretation of bare plurals in English: topic bare plurals are interpreted generically, focused bare plurals are interpreted existentially. When bare plurals are topics they must be specific, i.e. they refer to kinds. After type-shifting they introduce variables which can be bound by the generic quantifier, yielding characterizing generics. Existentially interpreted bare plurals are not variables, but denote properties that are incorporated into the predicate.The type of predicate determines the interpretation of (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   9 citations  
  • Generic one, arbitrary PRO, and the first person.Friederike Moltmann - 2006 - Natural Language Semantics 14 (3):257–281.
    The generic pronoun 'one' (or its empty counterpart, arbitrary PRO) exhibits a range of properties that show a special connection to the first person, or rather the relevant intentional agent (speaker, addressee, or described agent). The paper argues that generic 'one' involves generic quantification in which the predicate is applied to a given entity ‘as if’ to the relevant agent himself. This is best understood in terms of simulation, a central notion in some recent developments in the philosophy of mind (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   16 citations  
  • Concepts, analysis, generics and the canberra plan.Mark Johnston & Sarah-Jane Leslie - 2012 - Philosophical Perspectives 26 (1):113-171.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   23 citations  
  • Simple Generics.David Liebesman - 2011 - Noûs 45 (3):409-442.
    Consensus has it that generic sentences such as “Dogs bark” and “Birds fly” contain, at the level of logical form, an unpronounced generic operator: Gen. On this view, generics have a tripartite structure similar to overtly quantified sentences such as “Most dogs bark” and “Typically, birds fly”. I argue that Gen doesn’t exist and that generics have a simple bipartite structure on par with ordinary atomic sentences such as “Homer is drinking”. On my view, the subject terms of generics are (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   74 citations  
  • Illusive Scope of Universal Quantifiers.Danny Fox & Uli Sauerland - 1997 - In Jill Beckman (ed.), Proceedings of NELS 26. GLSA, UMass Amhert.
    It is widely believed that existential quantifiers can bring about the semantic effects of a scope which is wider than their actual syntactic scope (See Fodor & Sag (1982), Cresti (1995), Kratzer (1995), Reinhart (1995) and Winter (1995), among many others.) On the other hand, it is assumed that the syntactic scope of universal quantifiers can be determined unequivocally by the semantics. This paper shows that this second assumption is wrong; universal quantifiers can also bring about scope illusions, though in (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   3 citations  
  • Generic Statements Require Little Evidence for Acceptance but Have Powerful Implications.Andrei Cimpian, Amanda C. Brandone & Susan A. Gelman - 2010 - Cognitive Science 34 (8):1452-1482.
    Generic statements (e.g., “Birds lay eggs”) express generalizations about categories. In this paper, we hypothesized that there is a paradoxical asymmetry at the core of generic meaning, such that these sentences have extremely strong implications but require little evidence to be judged true. Four experiments confirmed the hypothesized asymmetry: Participants interpreted novel generics such as “Lorches have purple feathers” as referring to nearly all lorches, but they judged the same novel generics to be true given a wide range of prevalence (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   56 citations