Decomposing Generics

LPP Graduate Seminar

Matt Husband

TT 2024

Every language has ways to express different types of generalizations, like Cars have radios, The orangutan is threatened with extinction, or A Protestant is hard working (Krifka, et al., 1995; Mari, et al. 2012). These expressions, termed generics, are important to our understanding of the mental capacities that underpin our ability to go beyond particular experiences and communicate with one another about the nature of our world. Understanding the linguistic elements that enter into such general interpretations and how those elements interact with other grammatical and extra-grammatical systems exposes the capacities that we use to represent generalizations – the ways we encode abstract kinds/types and statistical, natural, and social regularities – and the ways those representations interact with other capacities, including representations of space and time, objects/tokens, quantities, and modality.

Having worked on genericity for several years, I have come to the conclusion that there has been too little syntactically focused work scattered across too few languages in this area and that this lack has steered semantic and philosophical research on genericity too narrowly. In answer to this, I am in the processing of putting together a monograph that adopts a syntactically-oriented approach, grounded in cross-linguistic evidence, to uncover and understand how distinct forms underlying different generic constructions guide their compositional interpretations.

The core of my proposal identifies two distinct structural sources for genericity. The first source, shown in (a), is kind reference, determined low in nominal syntax such that the absence of a functional head DimP, which houses a Carlsonian realization operator, yields (sub)kind interpretations. The second source, shown in (b), is generic quantification, originating higher in nominal syntax and licensing strong quantification via the functional heads DP and #P and, crucially, also a predicative AdjP which determines the generic modal domain (e.g. stereotypical, sociolegal, etc).

Kind Reference: [DP the [#P the (*[DimP Dim) [NP tiger ] (]) ]]
Generic Quantification: geni [DP Di [#P #i [NP [IP PRO I Adjigen ] [NP tigers ]]]

The purpose of this seminar is to review my original motivate for a distinction between these two sources and then investigate each of them in turn. The seminar is titled Decomposing Generics as a nod to both of these sources and the ways they interact with other functional structure, with the goal of demonstrating that genericity is not one single construction or quantifier or predicational format, but rather emerges from the compositional interaction of grammatical elements with at least one of these two sources. It is this compositional interaction, I claim, which accounts for the variety of generic interpretations and their cross-linguistic diversity.

General Background Reading

Krifka, M., Pelletier, F. J., Carlson, G. N., ter Meulen, A., Chierchia, G. & Link, G. (1995). Genericity: An introduction. In G. Carlson & J. Pelletier (eds.), The Generic Book, pp. 1–124. University Of Chicago Press.

Mari, A., Beyssade, C. & Del Prete, F. (2012). Introduction. In A. Mari, C. Beyssade & F. Del Prete (eds.), Genericity, pp. 1–92. Oxford University Press.

Week 5: Generic and kind interpretations

Week 5 is structured around the importance of recognizing two distinct sources of genericity, kind reference and generic quantification. While some distinction between these two sources has been recognized (e.g. Krifka, 1987), this monograph distinguishes between kind reference and generic quantification using evidence from selectional restrictions, Principle C, and weak crossover, and motivates a structural distinction to be refined throughout the monograph. Subkind interpretation, arising from interactions with count syntax, is shown to be an important and underappreciated source of genericity, opening a path for a compositional account of the plural affix in bare plurals receiving a kind reading. Being structurally distinct, these two sources are also shown to not compete with one another but can instead emerge together, predicting the existence of generically quantified kind reference nominals. Recognizing these two distinct sources of genericity sets the stage for investigating each on their own terms.

Main Reading

Husband, E.M. (2019) Generic, kind, and subkind interpretations: Reflections on Brugger (1993). Manuscript. University of Oxford. https://ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/004669

Other Readings

*Brockett, C. (1991). The syntax of generics: Japanese evidence for the quantificational model. In WCCFL (Vol. 9, pp. 59-74).

Brockett, C. J. (1991). Wa-marking in Japanese and the syntax and semantics of generic sentences. Cornell University.

Brugger, G. (1993). Generic interpretations and expletive determiners. University of Venice Working Papers in Linguistics 3(1). 1.

Krifka, M., & Gerstner, C. (1987). An outline of genericity. Seminar für natürlich-sprachliche Systeme der Universität Tübingen.

Week 6: Kind and subkind reference

Week 6 turns to kind reference, proposing that the roots of nominals begin their life in the domain of kinds and can only come to denote objects via a type-shift housed in a low function projection, DimP, that provides spatiotemporal realization, or dimension, to the nominal. Object interpretations, therefore, are argued to be built structurally in the syntax. Empirical evidence for this comes from the observation of two patterns in the distribution of kind and object interpretations related to the count/mass distinction, which challenge alternative proposals such as Dayal’s (2004) Noun Ambiguity Hypothesis and Borik & Espinal’s (2015) Number Realization Hypothesis. Initial focus is on English and Dutch, but these two patterns are observed in a variety of languages, with ambiguity found with optional classifiers in Malay, Japanese, Thai, and Hungarian, and complementarity found between sound and broken plurals in Modern Arabic, all areas I plan to expand on. Emerging from this analysis is a typological prediction that no language has dedicated functional structure for kind interpretation.

Main Reading

Husband, E.M. (2022). Nothing much for kinds. In Stockall, L., Martí, L., Adger, D., Roy, I. and Ouwayda, S. (eds.) For Hagit: A celebration. QMUL Occasional Papers in Linguistics, no. 47.

Other Readings

Borer, H. (2005). In Name Only. Oxford University Press. [Chapter 4]

*Borik, O. & Espinal, M. T. (2012). On definite kinds. Recherches linguistiques de Vincennes, 41. 123–146.

Borik, O. & Espinal, M. T. (2015). Reference to kinds and to other generic expressions in Spanish: definiteness and number. The Linguistic Review, 32(2). 167–225.

Borik, O. & Espinal, M. T. (2020). Numberless kinds: Evidence from Russian. Catalan Journal of Linguistics, 19. 231-260.

Dayal, V. (2004). Number marking and (in)definiteness in kind terms. Linguistics and Philosophy, 27(4). 393–450

Husband, E.M. (in prep). Instantiation, diminutives, and reference to kinds. Manuscript.

Week 7: Generic quantification

Week 7 turns to generic quantification and initiates an argument that gen, the classic covert generic quantifier, should be decomposed into quantificational and modal components which are separately structured inside nominal syntax. Focusing on the quantificational component, we begin with the typical proposal that gen is an A-quantifier projected outside of nominals. In contrast to this, however, my research suggests that gen is better analyzed as a type of D-quantifier inside nominal structure. Empirical evidence comes from restrictions on pre-verbal bare nominals in Hebrew which are permitted only with a generic interpretation, building on the licensing of an event phrase, EP, and nominal quantity, #P, from Borer (2005). Further research involving ‘degree’ fronting will aim to determine whether such D-quantifiers can raise out of nominals and thus look more like A-quantifiers.

Main Reading

Husband, E. M. (2022). The syntax of generics and the absence of generic articles. Proceedings of the Linguistic Society of America (PLSA) 7(1). 5213. DOI:10.3765/plsa.v7i1.5213 [Concentrating on Sections 2-3]

Other Readings

Borer, H. (2005). The Normal Course of Events. Oxford University Press. [Chapter 9: The Existential Road: Unergatives and Transitives]

Borer, H. (2005). In Name Only. Oxford University Press. [Chapter 5: Things that Count: Null D]

Borer, H. (2010). Locales. In M. Rappaport Hovav, E. Doron, & I. Sichel (eds.) Lexical Semantics, Syntax, and Event Structure. Oxford Studies in Theoretical Linguistics 27. Oxford University Press.

Gerstner-Link, C. (1998). A typological approach to generics. Manuscript.

Leu, T. (2015). The Architecture of Determiners. Oxford University Press, USA. [Chapter 5: Ein-Determiners]

O’Connor, E. (2015). Trapped in the Noun Phrase: When Degree Quantifiers Can’t QR. In Proceedings of the 32nd West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics (pp. 149-158). Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Proceedings Project.

Week 8: Generic modality

Week 8 then turns to the modal component of gen, arguing that it is also found inside nominals and is structured via an adjectival source. Initial evidence comes from paraphrases and adnominal conditionals where a quantificational and a modal component, restricted within a nominal, surface separately as a quantifier and an adjective, respectively. Overt generic adjectives like normal/typical appear to be predicative, suggesting that they arise from a reduced relative clause (Kayne, 1994; Leu 2015), though further work is needed to support this analysis. Adopting this proposal provides an account of the language universal that no language has a dedicated generic article. The local relationship required for lexicalization, be it spanning or some similar constraint, cannot be established between the quantification component (D and #) and the model component (Adjgen).

Main Reading

Other Readings

Cinque, G. (2010). The Syntax of Adjectives: A Comparative Study. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Cohen, A. (2012). Generics as modals. Recherches linguistiques de Vincennes, 41, 63–82.

Fanselow, G. (1985). The sentential nature of prenominal adjectives in German. Folio Linguistica 20, 341–380.

Frana, I. (2017). Modality in the nominal domain. In M.-L. Rivero, A. Arregui & A. Salanova (eds.), Modality across Syntactic Categories, 49–69. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Leu, T. (2015). The Architecture of Determiners. Oxford University Press, USA. [Chapter 3: xAP]