期刊
INQUIRY-AN INTERDISCIPLINARY JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
卷 66, 期 9, 页码 1613-1654出版社
ROUTLEDGE JOURNALS, TAYLOR & FRANCIS LTD
DOI: 10.1080/0020174X.2016.1267407
关键词
Semantics; generics; kinds; quantification; sortals; presupposition
类别
This paper examines the kind theory's explanation of generic sentences and analyzes the standard objections against it. The paper also introduces a modernized extension of the kind theory and explains the four distinctive features of generic sentences.
Generic sentences are commonsense statements of the form 'Fs are G,' like 'Bears have fur' or 'Rattlesnakes are poisonous.' Kind theories hold that rather than being general statements about individual objects, they are particular statements about kinds. This paper examines the standard objections against the kind theory and argues that they only apply to the most simplified version of the theory. The more sophisticated version, which has received little discussion in the literature in spite of having been formulated concurrently with the simple version, is immune to this standard battery of objections. After discussing four distinctive features of generic sentences, the paper then presents a modernized extension of the sophisticated kind theory which explains the presence of these features. Although the choice between a kind theory and the more standardly accepted adverbial quantificational theory is complex, these considerations suggest that the two approaches are at least deserving of equal consideration for the purposes of natural language semantics.
作者
我是这篇论文的作者
点击您的名字以认领此论文并将其添加到您的个人资料中。
推荐
暂无数据