Greenberg (2007)

Like Drewery (1998), the modal account proposed in Greenberg (2007) also aims to capture the influence of exceptional individuals on the overall interpretation of generic sentences. Greenberg also aims to investigate and model the difference between generic sentences containing indefinite singular noun phrases (IS generics) and those containing bare plurals (BP generics).

Greenberg’s starting point is an observation from the literature that only a proper subset of lawlike generalizations can be expressed with IS generics, while all lawlike generalizations can be expressed by means of BP generics (cf. Krifka et al. 1995).⁴⁹ Compare the IS generics in(72) and (73) to the respective BP generics.

(72) a. A dog has four legs.

b. Dogs have four legs.

(Greenberg 2007:131) (73) a. #A madrigal is popular.

b. Madrigals are popular.

(Greenberg 2007:132)

Previous attempts in the literature to capture the asymmetry between IS generics and BP generics propose e.g. that IS generics can only express relations between individuals and their “essential properties” (cf.Krifka et al. 1995), or that the underlying semantics of IS generics differs fundamentally from that of BP generics (cf. Cohen 2001). In contrast, Greenberg (2007) argues that the main difference between IS generics and BP generics lies in their different behavior regarding their tolerance for exceptions:

Only BP generics can be used to express generalizations that have exceptions for which speakers cannot explicitly state what causes their status as exceptions. This vagueness, Greenberg argues, is the result of vagueness with respect to the underlying regularity which can only be expressed by BP generics. IS generics, in contrast, can only express

48Note that the descriptive readings still differ from accidental generalizations in that some under-lying non-accidental regularity is assumed.

49This is also observed inDrewery(1998), but not further pursued. Drewery leaves generic sentences containing indefinite singular noun phrases for further research, and focusses completely on generic sentences containing bare plurals.

generalizations for which speakers can determine explicitly which individuals count as exceptions, and why. Example (74) illustrates this observation.

(74) a. #A Norwegian student with a name ending in ‘s’ wears thick green socks.

b. Norwegian students with a name ending in ‘s’ wear thick green socks.

(Greenberg 2007:132)

Assume that it is observed that Norwegian students with a name ending in ‘s’ seem to wear thick green socks all the time, but that it is unclear whether there is an underlying reason for this. In such a scenario, only the BP generic variant in (74) can be used, which expresses that there is an underlying regularity which cannot be made explicit.

The IS variant is infelicitous. If(74)is considered in a different scenario in which there is an underlying rule issued by some official institution, the IS variant improves. As expected, the BP variant stays felicitous.

A central topic in Greenberg’s investigation of the difference between IS generics and BP generics are the different effects exceptions and irrelevant individuals have on the truth of a generic sentence. Irrelevant individuals, in contrast to exceptional individuals, are not taken into consideration at all when the validity of a given generic statement is considered. Which individuals are relevant is argued to be determined either contextually as in(75-a)(pace Condoravdi 1994;Krifka et al. 1995, see discussion in Section 3.3.1), or by some explicit frame-setting expression as in (75-b).

(75) a. (Context: There are professors and students in this university.) A professor wears a tie./Professors wear a tie.

(Can mean: A professor in this university wears a tie.) (Greenberg 2007:134)

b. In this university, a professor wears a tie.

Exceptional individuals are relevant for the truth of a given generic sentence. Their defining property is that for some reason or other, they are exempt from conforming to the generalization that is expressed. Greenberg formulates the abnormality constraint in (76) to capture this intuition.

(76) Abnormality constraint: Individuals that are exceptions to a given generic statement need to be non-standard or abnormal in some sense.

The same considerations apply to irrelevant and exceptional situations.

Since IS generics and BP generics sometimes express the same generalizations, as e.g. in (72), Greenberg proposes a unified, underspecified modal semantics for both types of generic sentences. She argues that the difference between the two variants is a result of additional conditions regarding the make-up of the accessibility relation in the

case of IS generics. BP generics, in contrast, can combine with any given accessibility relation assigned to Gen.

The general form of Greenberg’s (2007) modal account for Gen is the same as in Krifka et al.(1995) andDrewery(1998): the generic operator expresses universal quan-tification over a set of accessible worlds and, in addition, universal quanquan-tification over a subset of the domain of individuals and/or situations in these worlds. Her specific pro-posal for IS generics and BP generics has two basic ingredients: (i) a genericity-specific type of accessibility relation, and (ii) a domain restriction on the set of individuals and situations adapted from Kadmon and Landman (1993), which is intended to capture the tolerance for exceptions.⁵⁰

The genericity-specific type of accessibility relation for generic sentences of the form

‘Ps are Q’, or ‘a P is a Q’ is called an “in-virtue-of accessibility relation”. The relation is induced by an underlyingin-virtue-of property S, which is shared by all non-exceptional individuals in the denotation ofP. It encodes the “reason” whyPs in general have the propertyQ. Consider example (77).

(77) A boy does not cry. assumed in-virtue-of property: being tough (Greenberg 2007:142)

In(77), the generic sentence expresses a regularity between being a boy and not crying.

The in-virtue-of property that connects the properties of being a boy and not crying is assumed to bebeing tough: all non-exceptional boys are tough, and someone who is tough does not cry.

Which properties constitute valid in-virtue-of properties for generic statements is subject to two requirements: (i)reasonable causation and (ii)association. Both restric-tions are intended as presupposirestric-tions on the meaning of generic sentences (Greenberg 2007:143).

The reasonable causation restriction on S is intended to ensure that there is some positive or negative link between the in-virtue-of property S and the property Q, see (78).

(78) S is a reasonable causer forQ as seen from w iff

∃w⁰ ∈B_w⁰ [∀x[S(x)(w⁰)→Q(x)(w⁰)]∨ ∀x[S(x)(w⁰)→ ¬Q(x)(w⁰)]]

for B_w⁰ maximally similar to w (Greenberg 2007:144)

The reasonable causation requirement holds if the sentence in(79)is true in the world of evaluation.

50Greenberg(2007) refines the formal proposal put forth inGreenberg(2003). The original proposal inGreenberg(2003) differs minimally from the account presented here, and will therefore be left aside in this discussion.

(79) It could be the case that all Ss are Qs or that no S is a Q.

The association requirement is given in (80).

(80) S isassociated with P in w iff

∀w⁰ ∈B_w[∀x[P(x)(w⁰)→S(x)(w⁰)]]

for B_w epistemically/deontically/stereotypically etc. accessible from w (Greenberg 2007:143)

The accessibility relation used to determine whether S is associated withP can be any knowledge- or rule-based relation.⁵¹ So, for two properties to be associated, (81)needs to be true in the world of evaluation for one possible interpretation of must.

(81) All Ps must be Ss.

The in-virtue-of accessibility relation based on S is given in (82).

(82) λw.λw⁰.∀x[P(x)(w⁰)→S(x)(w⁰)]

For a world w, this relation returns those worldsw⁰ in which allP individuals have the in-virtue-of property S.⁵²

The final architecture of Greenberg’s account for sentences of the form ‘Ps are Qs’

and ‘a P is a Q’ is schematically represented in (83).

(83) ∀w⁰[w⁰ ∈R_w → ∀x[P^X(x)(w⁰)→Q(x)(w⁰)]]

with R_w =λw⁰.∀x[P(x)(w⁰)→S(x)(w⁰)]

51Greenberg does not explicitly state which accessibility relation is chosen in a particular case, or whether facts, norms, or stereotypes exhaust the possible sources for determining association. From the accompanying explanations, it seems that forS to be associated withP, it is sufficient if there is one accessibility relation that provides the necessary set of worlds.

52Mari(2008) criticizes Greenberg’s assumption of an underlying in-virtue-of property. She argues that it is an established fact—she cites Rooth (1995) among others—that for any generic sentence that contains a subject NP with an overt modifying element, the modifying element is the relevant in-virtue-of property. Since Greenberg assumes that in-in-virtue-of properties are shared by all individuals in the accessible worlds, Mari argues that the modifiying properties are predicted to be essential properties of the non-exceptional individuals.

I think that this is not a valid point of criticism and does not reflect what Greenberg intends with the in-virtue-of property. First, the association relation is not an essential property relation. Second, Mari’s way of reasoning would imply that any in-virtue-of property could be inserted as an overt modifier without a change in the truth-conditions of the generic statement. That is,(i-a) should be equivalent to(i-b).

(i) a. A boy does not cry. assumed in-virtue-of property: tough (Greenberg 2007:142)

b. A tough boy does not cry.

However, introducing a modifier on the noun boy in (i-b) in fact changes the expressed regularity.

This is another instance of Drewery’s (1998) observation regarding restrictive modifiers (cf. Section 3.3.3).