Generics Oversimplified: Generics Oversimplified
Generics Oversimplified: Generics Oversimplified
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泛型过于简化： 泛型过于简化
DOI：
10.1111/nous.12039
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发表时间：
2015
期刊：
影响因子：
--
通讯作者：
S. Leslie
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
S. Leslie
简单的复数类属是诸如“老虎有条纹”、“鸭子下蛋”和“蚊子携带疟疾”之类的句子。要对这些句子进行充分的真条件分析是相当具有挑战性的，这几个简单的例子很容易说明这一点。为什么“鸭子下蛋”对我们来说毫无争议是正确的，而“鸭子是雌性的”却不是？当然，母鸭比产蛋鸭多，因为有些母鸭是不育的，不成熟的，等等。为什么只有百分之一的蚊子携带疟疾，而“书籍是平装的”却是假的，尽管80%以上的书都是平装的？本文不太关心这些问题，而是要讨论我们应该如何理解纯复数泛型的逻辑形式。特别是，本文评估了David Liebesman最近在一篇题为“Simple Generics”（2011）的文章中捍卫的一个大胆假设。Liebesman提出了一个关于泛型的逻辑形式的建议，如果正确的话，这个建议将推翻语言学和哲学中三十多年来关于泛型的研究，Liebesman的描述正在迅速变得有影响力（参见，Assarsson 2012; McConnell-Ginet 2012，以及其他对它有利的讨论），最近还获得了被列入哲学家年度的荣誉。因此，评估它在试图取代语言正统方面的成功是很重要的。
Bare plural generics are sentences such as" tigers are striped"," ducks lay eggs", and" mosquitoes carry malaria". It is quite challenging to provide an adequate truth-conditional analysis of these sentences, as is easily illustrated by these few simple examples. Why does" ducks lay eggs" strike us as uncontroversially true, while" ducks are female" does not? There are, of course, more female ducks tha egg-laying ducks, since some female ducks are infertile, immature, and so on. Why is" mosquitoes carry malaria" true when just one percent of mosquitoes have th property-while" books are paperbacks" is false, despite over eighty percent of books being paperbacks?This paper is not concerned so much with these questions, but rather with the question of how we should understand the logical form of bare plural generics. 2 In particular, this paper evaluates a bold hypothesis that has recently been defende by David Liebesman in an article entitled" Simple Generics"(2011). Liebesman lays out a proposal concerning the logical form of generics that would, if correc overturn more than thirty years of research on generics in linguistics and philosophy Liebesman's account is rapidly becoming influential (see, eg, Assarsson 2012; McConnell-Ginet 2012, among others for favorable discussion of it), and recently earned the honor of being included in the Philosopher's Annual. It is therefore important to evaluate its success in attempting to displace the linguistic orthodoxy.