Contextualising generic and universal generalisations: quantifier domain restriction and the generic overgeneralisation effect
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Editors
Nouwen, R
Publisher
Journal
Journal of Semantics
ISSN
0167-5133
0167-5133
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Show full item recordAbstract
Generic generalisations (e.g. ‘tigers have stripes’, ‘ducks lay eggs’) refer to a
characteristic property of a kind. Recently, the generics-as-default view has posited
that we have a bias towards interpreting universally quantified statements as generic.
Evidence offered for this view is the Generic Overgeneralisation (GOG) effect, which
refers to the documented tendency of participants to misinterpret a quantificational
statement like ‘all ducks lay eggs’ as if it were a generic and thus accept it
as true, even though they know it is false. Across two experiments in English
and Greek we systematically addressed the relevance of context and quantifier
domain restriction for this kind of behaviour. Participants judged generic majority
characteristic statements like ‘tigers have stripes’ or statements with universal
quantifiers with different sensitivity to quantifier domain restriction preceded by one
of three levels of context (neutral, contradictory and supportive). We found that
context significantly affected the rates at which participants accepted universally
quantified statements. Our results demonstrate that quantifier domain restriction
is a viable alternative explanation for a significant proportion of the judgements of
universally quantified statements that have been called GOG errors.
Authors
Lazaridou-Chatzigoga, D; Katsos, N; Stockall, LCollections
- Linguistics [250]
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