PhLing: Bernhard Nickel (Harvard)

Date: Friday, February 3

Time: 1:30 – 3:30 pm

LocationKresge 3364

TitleGenerics and Conservativity

Abstract:

Generic sentences, such as “ravens are black” or “tigers have stripes” seem to express a generalization of some sort. This suggests the hypothesis that generics contain an unpronounced quantificational element at LF, gen. However, this hypothesis faces several problems, too, including the apparent failure of conservativity. For example, ”ravens are black” does not seem to be equivalent to “ravens are ravens that are black”. I argue that the apparent failure of conservativity is merely apparent, and that sentences like “ravens are ravens that are black” or “ravens are black ravens” are unacceptable for reasons that are orthogonal to conservativity: semantic interpretation breaks down. This analysis can be extended to deal with some famously troublesome examples for normality-analyses of generics, including “books are paperbacks” and “prime numbers are odd.”

 

 

3 thoughts on “PhLing: Bernhard Nickel (Harvard)

  • March 23, 2023 at 6:01 pm
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    Very well-written article on Havard, I must admit it’s been a while since I saw an article as brief and equally speaks volumes as this. I wrote an article about this on my blog but the quality isn’t as standard as yours. Hopefully, you get to check it at “getting into Havard” and leave a comment if you can, otherwise great job!

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  • December 29, 2023 at 3:17 pm
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