On generics
Östen Dahl · Cambridge University Press eBooks · 1975
In this paper, I am going to discuss two closely related phenomena, namely generic tense and generic noun phrases. By ‘generic tense’ I am referring to cases such as the following: Beavers build dams I write with my left hand John smokes cigars Dogs bark The sun rises in the east Oil floats on water John does not speak German A gentleman does not offend a lady Examples of generic noun phrases are the italicized constituents in the following sentences: Beavers build dams A beaver builds dams The beaver builds dams I shall mainly be concerned with the types exemplified by (9) and (10), i.e. indefinite generic noun phrases. I am going to claim in this paper that the common semantic property of all generic expressions is that they are used to express law-like, or nomic, statements. The first thing to be done is to make this concept clear. A suitable way of doing so to a linguistic audience may be by using the following example, taken from Chomsky and Halle (1968). Suppose only inhabitants of Tasmania survive a future war, they say. ‘It might then be a property of all then existing languages that pitch is not used to differentiate lexical items.’