THINK GENERIC! by Ariel Cohen ( 9781575862071 ) - Books & Audio Books at Pickabook.co.uk

Item Details

Title:

THINK GENERIC!
THE MEANING AND USE OF GENERIC SENTENCES

By:

Ariel Cohen

Format:

Hardback

List price:

£52.00

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£46.80

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10% off

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£5.20

ISBN 10:

1575862077

ISBN 13:

9781575862071

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Publisher:

CENTRE FOR THE STUDY OF LANGUAGE & INFORMATION

Pub. date:

1 June, 1999

Series:

Dissertations in Linguistics S.

Pages:

222

Description:

This book provides a formal probabilistic approach to the meaning and use of generic sentences.

Synopsis:

Our knowledge about the world is often expressed by generic sentences, yet their meanings are far from clear. This book provides answers to central problems concerning generics: what do they mean? Which factors affect their interpretation? How can one reason with generics? Cohen proposes that the meanings of generics are probability judgments, and shows how this view accounts for many of their puzzling properties, including lawlikeness. Generics are evaluated with respect to alternatives. Cohen argues that alternatives are induced by the kind as well as by the predicated property, and thus provides a uniform account of the varied interpretations of generics. He studies the formal properties of alternatives and provides a compositional account of their derivation by focus and presupposition. Cohen uses his semantics of generics to provide a formal characterization of adequate default reasoning, and proves some desirable results of this formalism.

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Imprint:

Centre for the Study of Language & Information

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Returnable

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