Generics, laws and context
This thesis is concerned with providing a philosophically motivated theory of the semantics of generics, by relating work in linguistics to work in philosophy and drawing out the philosophical issues involved. The results should be of interest to both disciplines. In chapter one, I survey the literature on genericity and give a characterisation of generic sentences and their central properties. This is needed, since the many and varied analyses of their semantics create some confusion over what actually counts as a generic sentence. I defend a philosophically robust characterisation of generic sentences, a characterisation that I go on to employ in the rest of thesis. The nomic regularities expressed by generics have been most closely studied in the literature on laws of nature, Special Science laws, and <I>ceteris paribus </I>laws. I examine this literature in chapter two, and then, in my third chapter, relate this to the nomic features of generics. This leads me to make an important distinction between an exception and a counterexample to a generic, which I develop into an analysis of the semantics of generics in chapter four. In the process, I argue for a radical shift in thinking about laws of nature,
Drewery, Alice
Generics, laws and context. This thesis is concerned with providing a philosophically motivated theory of the semantics of generics, by relating work in linguistics to work in philosophy and drawing out the philosophical issues involved. The results should be of interest to both disciplines. In chapter one, I survey the literature on genericity and give a characterisation of generic sentences and their central properties. This is needed, since the many and varied analyses of their semantics create some confusion over what actually counts as a generic sentence. I defend a philosophically robust characterisation of generic sentences, a characterisation that I go on to employ in the rest of thesis. The nomic regularities expressed by generics have been most closely studied in the literature on laws of nature, Special Science laws, and <I>ceteris paribus </I>laws. I examine this literature in chapter two, and then, in my third chapter, relate this to the nomic features of generics. This leads me to make an important distinction between an exception and a counterexample to a generic, which I develop into an analysis of the semantics of generics in chapter four. In the process, I argue for a radical shift in thinking about laws of nature,
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