Linguistics Graduate Students Association

Genericity and Grammar Generic statements such as those in (1) express non-accidental, fundamental characteristics of some type of individuals and/or situations. 1) a. Birds fly. b. Liz smokes after dinner. c. This machine crushes oranges. Such generic statements are cross-linguistically ubiquitous, tend to be morphosyntactically simple, and provide essential means to express the ways in … Read More

Structuring ignorance Certain constructions in natural language are tied to an inference that the speaker cannot be more informative; they give rise to what is often referred to as 'ignorance inferences'. For instance, the sentences in (1) convey that the speaker doesn't know who/how many people came to the party. 1) a. Liz or Sue … Read More