The Korean Association for the Study of English Language and Linguistics

[ Article ]

Korea Journal of English Language and Linguistics - Vol. 23, No. 0, pp.358-375

ISSN: 1598-1398 (Print) 2586-7474 (Online)

Print publication date 30 Jan 2023

Received 25 Jan 2023 Revised 16 Mar 2023 Accepted 23 Apr 2023

DOI: https://doi.org/10.15738/kjell.23..202305.358

Non-conventionalized Generics and Exceptions

YoungEun Yoon

Professor, Department of English Language & Literature Ewha Womans University yeyoon@ewha.ac.kr

© 2023 KASELL All rights reserved
This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons License, which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Abstract

As is well known, research on generics is represented by three approaches: majority-based (Cohen 1996, 1999, 2004), normalcy-based (Nickel 2006; 2009; 2010a, b; 2013; 2016; 2018), and cognition-based (Leslie 2007a, b; 2008; 2013; 2017) approaches. Two recent approaches proposed by van Rooij and Schulz (2020) and Tessler and Goodman (2019) are more elaborated theories on generics, although neither of these approaches nor the three representative theories can fully account for various generics data, as argued by Yoon (2021). On the other hand, Nguyen (2020) proposes another theory of generics, the so-called ‘radical’ theory, which argues that the generic operator has no semantic content, and that the various quantificational interpretations of bare plural generics are determined contextually. In this context, the main purpose of this paper is to provide a critical review of some recently published analyses, including Nguyen’s theory, and to analyze non-conventionalized generics. While conventionalized or conceptualized generics have received much attention from researchers, non-conventionalized generics have not been studied as extensively. It will be argued that Nguyen’s theory simply transfers the burden onto pragmatics, and that non-conventionalized as well as conventionalized generics tend to be interpreted based on people’s perceptions of their exceptions, in line with Yoon (2021). This position will be supported by experimental results.

Keywords:

(non-)conventionalized or conceptualized generics, absolute/relative generics, alternative sets of entities/features, encyclopedic and contextual knowledge, exceptions

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