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Genericity

Claudia Gerstner-Link, Manfred Krifka · Syntax · 1993

Cited by 12

Genericity

Cohen, Ariel · PhilPapers (PhilPapers Foundation) · 2022

Generics are sentences such as Birds fly, which express generalizations. They are prevalent in speech, and as far as is known, no human language lacks generics. Yet, it is very far from clear what they mean. After all, not all birds fly—penguins don’t! There are two general views about the meaning of generics in the literature, and each view encompasses many specific theories. According to the inductivist view, a generic states that a sufficient number of individuals satisfy a certain property—in the example above, it says that sufficiently many birds fly. This view faces the complicated problem of spelling out exactly how many is “sufficiently many” in a way that correctly captures the intuitive truth conditions of generics. An alternative, the rules and regulations view, despairs from this project and proposes instead that generics directly express rules in the world. Rules are taken to be abstract objects, which are not related to the properties of specific individuals. This view faces the difficult problem of explaining how people come to know of such rules when judging the truth of falsity of generics, and accounting for the strong intuition that a sentence such as Birds fly talks about birds, not abstract objects. What seems to be beyond dispute is that generics, even if they do not express rules, are lawlike: they state non-accidental generalizations. Many scholars have taken this fact to indicate that generics are parametric on possible worlds: they refer to worlds other than the actual world. This, again, raises the problem of how people come to know about what happens in these other worlds. However, a rigorous application of standard tests for intensionality shows that generics are not, in fact, parametric on possible worlds, but only on time. This unusual property may explain much of the mystery surrounding generics. Another mysterious property of generics is that although there is no language without them, there is no linguistic construction that is devoted to the expression of genericity. Rather, generics can be expressed in a variety of ways, each of which can also express nongenerics. Yet, each manifestation of generics differs subtly (or sometimes not so subtly) in its meaning from the others. Even when these and other puzzles of genericity are solved, one mystery would remain: Why are generics, which are so easy to produce and understand in conversation, so difficult to analyze?

Cited by 0

Genericity

Cohen, Ariel · PhilPapers (PhilPapers Foundation) · 2022

Generics are sentences such as Birds fly, which express generalizations. They are prevalent in speech, and as far as is known, no human language lacks generics. Yet, it is very far from clear what they mean. After all, not all birds fly—penguins don’t! There are two general views about the meaning of generics in the literature, and each view encompasses many specific theories. According to the inductivist view, a generic states that a sufficient number of individuals satisfy a certain property—in the example above, it says that sufficiently many birds fly. This view faces the complicated problem of spelling out exactly how many is “sufficiently many” in a way that correctly captures the intuitive truth conditions of generics. An alternative, the rules and regulations view, despairs from this project and proposes instead that generics directly express rules in the world. Rules are taken to be abstract objects, which are not related to the properties of specific individuals. This view faces the difficult problem of explaining how people come to know of such rules when judging the truth of falsity of generics, and accounting for the strong intuition that a sentence such as Birds fly talks about birds, not abstract objects. What seems to be beyond dispute is that generics, even if they do not express rules, are lawlike: they state non-accidental generalizations. Many scholars have taken this fact to indicate that generics are parametric on possible worlds: they refer to worlds other than the actual world. This, again, raises the problem of how people come to know about what happens in these other worlds. However, a rigorous application of standard tests for intensionality shows that generics are not, in fact, parametric on possible worlds, but only on time. This unusual property may explain much of the mystery surrounding generics. Another mysterious property of generics is that although there is no language without them, there is no linguistic construction that is devoted to the expression of genericity. Rather, generics can be expressed in a variety of ways, each of which can also express nongenerics. Yet, each manifestation of generics differs subtly (or sometimes not so subtly) in its meaning from the others. Even when these and other puzzles of genericity are solved, one mystery would remain: Why are generics, which are so easy to produce and understand in conversation, so difficult to analyze?

Cited by 0

Genericity

Alda Mari, Claire Beyssade, Fabio Del Prete · Oxford University Press eBooks · 2012

This book provides an up-to-date introduction to the study of generics and pursues the enterprise of the influential Generic Book edited by Gregory Carlson and Jeffry Pelletier, which was published in 1995. Genericity is a key notion in the study of human cognition as it reveals our capacity to organize our perceived reality into classes and to describe regularities. The generic can be expressed at the level of a word or phrase (i.e., the potato in The Irish economy became dependent upon the potato) or an entire sentence (e.g., in John smokes a cigar after dinner, the generic aspect is a property of the expression, rather than any single word or phrase within it). This book gathers new work from senior and young researchers to reconsider the notion of genericity, examining the distinct contributions made by the determiner phrase (e.g., the notions of kind/individual) and the verbal predicate (e.g., the notions of permanency, disposition, ability, habituality, and plurality). Finally, in connection with the whole sentence, the analytic/synthetic distinction is discussed as well as the notion of normality.

Cited by 17

Genericity

Encyclopedia of Chinese Language and Linguistics · 2015

Cited by 1

Genericity

Dimitra Lazaridou‐Chatzigoga · Oxford University Press eBooks · 2019

Abstract ‘Birds fly’, ‘The fox is a sly animal’, and ‘A cat lands on its feet’ are all generic generalizations that allow speakers to talk about kinds of entities rather than individuals and to refer to their characteristic or essential properties. Their complex yet fundamental nature has attracted the interest of linguists and philosophers of language since the 1970s while they have also recently become the focus of concentrated interest by cognitive and developmental psychologists. The two main approaches to genericity in two different fields, formal semantics and cognitive psychology, are discussed. The review of the experimental research on the topic reveals that while the experimental study of generics is still in its early stages, interdisciplinary work that integrates the tools and perspectives of both strands of investigation can substantially advance our understanding of the topic.

Cited by 7

Genericity

Kupisch, Tanja, Snape, Neal · Lund University Publications (Lund University) · 2024

Cited by 0

@genericity

Bulletin of Miscellaneous Information (Royal Gardens Kew)

Cited by 0

Family Genericity

Erik Ernst · DAIMI Report Series · 2006

Type abstraction in object-oriented languages embody two techniques, each with its own strenghts and weaknesses. The first technique is extension, yielding abstraction mechanisms with good support for gradual specification.<br />The prime example is inheritance. The second technique is functional abstraction, yielding more precise knowledge about the outcome. The prime example is type parameterized classes. This paper argues that these techniques should be<br />clearly separated to work optimally, and also that current languages fail to do this.We have applied this design philosophy to a language based on an extension mechanism, namely virtual classes. As a result, some elements based on functional abstraction have been introduced, but they are simple and only used for things where they excel; conversely, the virtual classes have become more flexible, because their role is now more well-defined.We designate the result as family genericity. The presented language design has been implemented.

Cited by 0Open access

Genericity, Perhaps

Val K. Warke · Assemblage · 2000

Cited by 0

Genericity generalized

Alnica Visser · Philosophical Studies · 2022

Cited by 2

Graded genericity

Lee, Junhyo, Nguyen, Anthony · PhilPapers (PhilPapers Foundation) · 2025

Any adequate semantics of generic sentences (e.g., “Philosophers evaluate arguments”) must accommodate both what we call the positive data and the negative data. The positive data consists of observations about what felicitous interpretations of generic sentences are available. Conversely, the negative data consists of observations about which interpretations of generic sentences are unavailable. Nguyen argues that only his pragmatic neo-Gricean account and Sterken’s indexical account can accommodate the positive data. Lee and Nguyen have advanced the debate by arguing that the negative data is a problem for both Nguyen’s and Sterken’s accounts; these two accounts seem to incorrectly predict that generics have felicitous interpretations that they, in fact, fail to have. In this paper, we advance this debate—and, more generally, the task of developing an adequate formal semantics of generics—by arguing that a neglected class of theories are compatible with both the positive data and the negative data. Specifically, we argue that treating the generic operator GEN as a relative gradable expression with a positive, upper- and lower- bounded scale helps accommodate the positive data and the negative data. While developing this view, we show how several previously developed semantics of generics may systematically accommodate both sets of data. One broad contribution of this paper is to show that, while they generate important desiderata, the positive and negative data cannot determine a unique semantics for generics. A further contribution of this paper is to highlight previously unnoted ways in which degree semantics may inform semantic theories of generic meaning.

Cited by 0

Light Genericity

Beniamino Accattoli, Adrienne Lancelot · Lecture notes in computer science · 2024

Cited by 3Open access

Light Genericity

Accattoli, Beniamino, Lancelot, Adrienne · SPIRE - Sciences Po Institutional REpository · 2024

To better understand Barendregt's genericity for the untyped call-by-value λ-calculus, we start by first revisiting it in call-by-name, adopting a lighter statement and establishing a connection with contextual equivalence. Then, we use it to give a new, lighter proof of maximality of head contextual equivalence, i.e. that H * is a maximal consistent equational theory. We move on to call-by-value, where we adapt these results and also introduce a new notion dual to light genericity, that we dub co-genericity. Lastly, we give alternative proofs of (co-)genericity based on applicative bisimilarity.

Cited by 0Open access

Unifying Genericity

Kresten Krab Thorup, Mads Torgersen · Lecture notes in computer science · 1999

Cited by 18

Graded genericity

Lee, Junhyo, Nguyen, Anthony · PhilPapers (PhilPapers Foundation) · 2025

Any adequate semantics of generic sentences (e.g., “Philosophers evaluate arguments”) must accommodate both what we call the positive data and the negative data. The positive data consists of observations about what felicitous interpretations of generic sentences are available. Conversely, the negative data consists of observations about which interpretations of generic sentences are unavailable. Nguyen argues that only his pragmatic neo-Gricean account and Sterken’s indexical account can accommodate the positive data. Lee and Nguyen have advanced the debate by arguing that the negative data is a problem for both Nguyen’s and Sterken’s accounts; these two accounts seem to incorrectly predict that generics have felicitous interpretations that they, in fact, fail to have. In this paper, we advance this debate—and, more generally, the task of developing an adequate formal semantics of generics—by arguing that a neglected class of theories are compatible with both the positive data and the negative data. Specifically, we argue that treating the generic operator GEN as a relative gradable expression with a positive, upper- and lower- bounded scale helps accommodate the positive data and the negative data. While developing this view, we show how several previously developed semantics of generics may systematically accommodate both sets of data. One broad contribution of this paper is to show that, while they generate important desiderata, the positive and negative data cannot determine a unique semantics for generics. A further contribution of this paper is to highlight previously unnoted ways in which degree semantics may inform semantic theories of generic meaning.

Cited by 0

Family Genericity

Ernst, Erik · 2006

Type abstraction in object-oriented languages embody two techniques, each with its own strenghts and weaknesses. The first technique is extension, yielding abstraction mechanisms with good support for gradual specification. The prime example is inheritance. The second technique is functional abstraction, yielding more precise knowledge about the outcome. The prime example is type parameterized classes. This paper argues that these techniques should be clearly separated to work optimally, and also that current languages fail to do this.<br/>We have applied this design philosophy to a language based on an extension mechanism, namely virtual classes. As a result, some elements based on functional abstraction have been introduced, but they are simple and only used for things where they excel; conversely, the virtual classes have become more flexible, because their role is now more well-defined. We designate the result as family genericity. <br/>The presented language design has been implemented.

Cited by 0

Genericity Results

Alexander J. Zaslavski · RePEc: Research Papers in Economics

Abstract In this chapter we continue to study the class of optimal control problems studied in Chaps. 3 and 4. There we established the convergence of approximate solutions on large intervals in the regions close to the end points. In this chapter we show that for a typical (in the sense of Baire category) integrand the values of approximate solutions at the end points converge to the limit which is a unique solution of the corresponding minimization problem associated with the integrand.

Cited by 0

through Genericity

Julien Bigot, Christian Pérez, Thème Num et al. · 2009

Cited by 0

Strict Genericity

Sy Friedman The, Sy D. Friedman · 2007

found in Jech [78], page 265. Proposition 1. If G is P -generic over hM;Ai where P is an element of M;S definable over hM [G]; Ai then S is strictly generic over M: Proof Sketch. We can assume that P is a complete Boolean algebra in M and that S ` ff for some ordinal ff 2 M: Then H = G &amp;quot; P 0 is P 0 -generic over M; where P 0 = complete subalgebra of P generated by the Boolean values of the sentences &amp;quot; fi 2 oe&amp;quot;, where fi ! ff and oe is a P-name for S: Then H witnesses the str

Cited by 0