Generics and Concepts

In the experimentally oriented literature on concepts, one often runs across discussions which include language to the following effect: The concept 'dog' is characterized (in part) by 'has four legs' 'Eats meat' is a feature of LION 'Flies' is a part of the prototype of BIRD …. The language employed in such descriptions fairly regularly consists of one part (the concept) that is expressed as a noun or a short phrase based on a noun, and the other part is a property, expressed as a predicate. (There is a relation expressed between them, the nature of which may vary and which need not concern us immediately.) The point is, when these components are combined, and dressed up a little to make them sound like grammatical English, the resulting sentences sound something like these: 1. a. Dogs have four legs b. Lions eat meat. c. A bird flies. Sentences like these express generalizations: they are not about particular events or characteristics, which might be exemplified by sentences such as the following: 2. a. Paul's dog is out in the yard b. That lion is eating some meat I just gave it. c. A bird flew by. These are not generic sentences. What is striking is that the conceptual literature tends not to use sentences like these in the discussions (at whatever the level of formality intended in the discussion). Rather, the language employed to discuss concepts and their structures bears a striking resemblance to the language examined in the literature on generics and habituals (e.g. Krifka et al, 1995). That is, taking a very broad and hazy perspective, there appears to be a striking confluence of interests between the study of concepts in the psychological and cognitive science literature, and the study of certain types of sentences in the formal semantics literature. Despite these initial confluences, the relationship between the meanings of generic sentences, and the study of conceptual structures remains unclear. While I cannot presently express any systematic ideas about what that relationship might be, this paper explores this relationship a little further, gives

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