Introduction. 1.1 Kinds and generalizations

Transcription

1 Chapter 1 Introduction 1.1 Kinds and generalizations Over the past decades, the study of genericity has occupied a central place in natural language semantics. The joint work of the Generic Group 1, which culminated in the publication of The Generic Book (Carlson & Pelletier 1995), has been an important milestone in the research on genericity. One of the crucial insights that emerged from this book was that there are two quite distinct phenomena that have been referred to or classified as genericity and that these should be distinguished carefully (cf. the introductory chapter of The Generic Book, i.e. Krifka et al. 1995). The first phenomenon is the expression of generalizations. This phenomenon is illustrated in (1). (1) a. Zuurstofmoleculen bestaan uit twee zuurstofatomen. Molecules of oxygen consist of two oxygen atoms. b. Het zuurstofmolecuul bestaat uit twee zuurstofatomen. The molecule of oxygen consists of two oxygen atoms c. Een zuurstofmolecuul best aat uit twee zuurstofatomen. A molecule of oxygen consists of two oxygen atoms. The sentences in (1) do not express specific or isolated facts, but state that the property of consisting of two oxygen atoms applies to molecules of oxygen in general. Krifka et al. (1995) call sentences like these characterizing sentences. The second phenomenon is illustrated in (2). Notice that sentence (2a) is preceded by the symbol %, which indicates variation among speakers (cf. chapter 7). (2) a. % Witte haaien zijn met uitsterven bedreigd. white sharks are with extinction threatened White sharks are threatened with extinction. b. De witte haai is met uitsterven bedreigd. the white shark is with extinction threatened The white shark is threatened with extinction. Individual sharks cannot die out. The property of being extinct can only be attributed to species. As a consequence, only species can be threatened with extinction. This means that the 1 The members of this group were: Gregory Carlson, Gennaro Chierchia, Manfred Krifka, Godehard Link, Francis Jeffry Pelletier and Alice ter Meulen. 1

2 underlined noun phrases 2 in (2) refer to a species: they are kind-referring or kind-referential noun phrases. 3 Predicates such as met uitsterven bedreigd zijn are called kind predicates. Such predicates have argument places that can be filled only with kind-referring noun phrases. Sentence (3) shows that indefinite singulars cannot occur in subject position of kind predicates. (3) # Een witte haai is met uitsterven bedreigd. a white shark is with extinction threatened We can conclude from this that indefinite singulars cannot be used as kind-referential noun phrases. This suggests that the semantics of sentence (1c) can be described as follows: the sentence as a whole is a characterizing sentence, i.e. the sentence expresses a generalization, but the subject noun phrase does not refer to a kind. This suggests that the fact that a noun phrase can be used in a characterizing sentence does not necessarily imply that the noun phrase is kind-referential. So, the question is whether the definite singular in (1a) and the bare plural in (1b) are kind-referring noun phrases (and if so, whether the kind-referential interpretation is the only available reading, cf. chapter 7). In this perspective, the naturally occurring example sentences in (4) are interesting. Importantly, the left conjuncts of the coordinate structures in (4) correspond to characterizing interpretations, while the right conjuncts contain kind predicates. This shows that the same noun phrase can be combined with a characterizing predicate and, at the same time, with a kind predicate (cf. for example De Vries 2005 for a discussion of the syntax of such coordinate structures). This is a piece of evidence that definite singulars are kind-referring noun phrases not only in kind predicate sentences like (2), but also in characterizing sentences like (1). 2 Here, I use noun phrase as a descriptive notion, corresponding to nominal constituent. In chapters 8 and 9, we will assume the hypothesis that NPs are headed by a Determiner Phrase. 3 One reason to use the notion kind(-referring noun phrase) (and not species) is that we want to treat the noun phrases in (2) on a par with noun phrases like vaste telefoons in (i), even though we do not normally use the word species to refer to kinds of telephones. (i) Vaste telefoons met uitsterven bedreigd. stationary telephones with extinction threatened Stationary telephones threatened with extinction. (Sentence originates from September 2006) 2

3 (4) a. De korenwolf leeft in zuid-limburg en wordt met uitsterven bedreigd. 4 the hamster lives in south-limburg and is with extinction threatened The hamster lives in the south of Limburg and is threatened with extinction. b. Het goudkopleeuwaapje leeft in Brazilië en is een bedreigde The golden-headed lion tamarin lives in Brazil and is a threatened diersoort. animal species. Corpus sentences like (5) indicate that the same holds for bare plurals: they (can) refer to a kind in characterizing sentences as well as in kind predicate sentences. (5) Uilpapegaaien: Ze zijn ongeveer 60 cm lang, leven in Nieuw-Zeeland Kakapos : They are approximately 60 cm long, live in New-Zealand en worden bedreigd met uitsterven. and are threatened with extinction. This illustrates that there is a semantic difference between sentences (1a) and (1b) on the one hand and (1c) on the other: while the subject noun phrases in (1a) and (1b) (can) receive kindreferential interpretations, this interpretation is not available for the indefinite singular in (1c). In this dissertation, the semantic differences between different noun phrase types, such as definite singulars, indefinite singulars and bare plurals will be investigated. We will discuss the semantic concepts associated with genericity and describe and account for the subtle semantic contrasts with regard to sentences like those in (1)-(5). Although our goal is to investigate the relations between syntactic and semantic aspects of characterizing sentences and kind-referential noun phrases, the focus of our study is primarily on semantics. This dissertation does not aim to make an important contribution to the latest developments in syntactic research in the framework of the Minimalist Program (Chomsky 1995) or in related frameworks. We do, however, demonstrate the relevance of our findings to contemporary syntactic theory. 1.2 Variation among speakers In the literature, it has been argued that (English) bare plurals unambiguously refer to kinds. This position is defended by Chierchia (1998) and Cohen (1999, 2002), among others. This hypothesis implies that a bare plural such as lions unambiguously refers to a kind not only in kind predicate sentences like (7a), but in characterizing sentences like (6) as well. This claim is problematic because there are speakers who do not judge sentence (7a) acceptable, while 4 The sentences originate from and Het Nieuwsblad, February

4 they do accept sentence (6). For example, Gerstner-Link & Krifka (1993: 966, 968) precede sentence (7a) with a question mark, while they judge (6) well-formed. If bare plurals unambiguously referred to kinds, we would expect sentence (7a) to be acceptable beyond doubt. (6) Lions are ferocious beasts. (7) a. % Lions are extinct. b. The lion is extinct. The semantics of English bare plurals has been a major topic in semantic theory for decades (cf. for example Carlson s 1977 influential dissertation, De Mey 1980, 1981, 1982, Longobardi 1994, 2001, Bosveld-de Smet 1998, Cohen & Erteschik-Shir 2001 and the collection of papers in Vogeleer 2006). However, the amount and the patterns of variation among speakers with respect to the acceptability of sentences like (6) and (7) has not received much attention in the literature. Yet, it is clear that the issue of variation among speakers is highly relevant to the study of the semantics of sentences like (6) and (7). An important objective of this thesis is to investigate the amount and the patterns of variation among speakers of Dutch in their acceptability judgements of characterizing and kind predicate sentences. The acceptability judgements of native speakers will be interpreted as evidence for or against theoretical claims. 1.3 The structure of the dissertation The dissertation is divided into three parts. The first part is largely concerned with a discussion of the theoretical concepts that are classified as genericity in the specialist semantic literature. Chapter 2 discusses the semantics and some aspects of the syntax of characterizing sentences. An important part of the discussion is devoted to habitual sentences. We provide a number of arguments against the assumption made for example by Krifka et al. that habitual sentences can be treated as a subcategory of characterizing sentences. Chapter 3 is devoted to reference to kinds. The chapter discusses the semantics of a number of sentence types in which kind-referential noun phrases are used. Chapter 4 contains a short discussion of the treatment of genericity in traditionally oriented grammars of Dutch. The second part is devoted to the presentation and discussion of empirical results. In this part the empirical scope of the investigation is extended to include some types of noun phrases that were not discussed in the first part, such as definite plurals (cf. sentences like (8)) and mass noun phrases (cf. sentences such as (9)). 4

5 (8) a. % De Neanderthalers waren gebouwd voor een koud klimaat. 5 the neanderthal were built for a cold climate The Neanderthal were built to survive a cold climate. b. % Momenteel zijn de bonobo s met uitsterven bedreigd. currently are the bonobos with extinction threatened Currently, tigers are threatened with extinction. (9) a. Bamboe is sterker dan staal. Bamboo is stronger than steal. b. Bamboe wordt met uitsterven bedreigd. bamboo is with extinction threatened Bamboo is threatened with extinction. Chapter 5 contains a general discussion of the relevance and the limitations of corpus-based and introspection-based approaches in semantics. One of the issues that will be discussed in chapter 5 is illustrated in (8): these sentences originate from text corpora, but they are judged unacceptable by a percentage of native speakers. Chapter 6 presents and discusses the results of three corpus studies into the frequencies of a number of characterizing and kind predicate sentences and reports the results of a questionnaire study into the acceptability judgements of a number of sentence types. The informants of the questionnaire study are native speakers of a number of local varieties spoken in different parts of the Netherlands and Flanders The chapters of the first two parts set the scene for the third part, in which we will account for a number of issues on the syntax-semantics interface. Chapter 7 argues that characterizing sentences with bare arguments (i.e. bare plurals and bare mass noun phrases) are ambiguous between an interpretation in which the bare argument refers to a kind and a reading in which it does not refer to a kind. The chapter focuses on Dutch data, but we also present some arguments in favour of the claim that English bare arguments can be treated on a par with Dutch ones. In chapter 8, we discuss some influential approaches to the syntax and semantics of reference (to kinds) and genericity, i.e. Longobardi (1994, 2001) and Chierchia (1998). Our conclusion will be that some aspects of these approaches are not in agreement with Dutch data and in particular with the complexity of the questionnaire data presented in the second part of the thesis. Chapter 9 presents an alternative description of the data. The data are more complicated and variable than has been assumed before. This makes it difficult to account for the patterns we find by cross-linguistically valid principles. The notions of economy and optimality proposed in chapter 9 only apply to specific sets of articles in specific languages/varieties. Hopefully, this dissertation as well as further research into variation in acceptability judgements will contribute to the development of universal principles that are in agreement with the complexity of the data. 5 The example sentences originate from and (September 2006). 5