Generics Are a Cognitive Default: Evidence From Sentence Processing (original) (raw)

Generics Are a Cognitive Default: Evidence From Sentence Processing Meredith Meyer (mermeyer@umich.edu), Susan A. Gelman (gelman@umich.edu), and Sarah M. Stilwell (stilwell@umich.edu) Department of Psychology, 530 Church Street Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1043 USA Abstract sentence Dogs have four legs as Most dogs have four legs, sets quantified by most similarly do not equate to the referents of generics. Consider, for instance, that although Sharks attack swimmers is often judged as acceptable, Most sharks attack swimmers is not. Generics are thus not reducible to quantifiers conveying statistical prevalence (e.g., Cimpian, Gelman, & Brandone, 2010). Noting these sorts of distinctions, most semantic analyses impute qualitative differences between generic and quantified reference (Carlson, 2010; Leslie, 2008) and reject earlier quantificational analyses treating generics as if they contained implicit quantification (e.g., Clark, 1973). Generics instead are kind-referring (Carlson, 2010), a...