Trivial and Real Exceptions in Generics

Abstract

Concerning the issue of exceptions in generics, Cohen (2004) argues that exceptions are allowed in generics only if "homogeneity" is not violated. The homogeneity constraint restricts that the exceptions should not form a salient "chunk" of the domain of the generic. A salient chunk could be formed, depending on the way in which the domain is mentally represented. "Tree" and "geometric" representations are proposed as the two ways of mapping of cognitive mental representations. Yoon (2006) argues, however, that choices between these two mental representations claimed to be involved in the interpretation process of generics are quite arbitrary, and that counterexamples also exist for the "homogeneity" requirement. Yoon also suggests that generics involve cognitive conceptualizations based on the language users' encyclopedic knowledge, world knowledge from experiences, common sense, beliefs, stereotypes, prejudices, etc. Given this, this paper revisits the widely-agreed-upon phenomenon of exceptions in generics, and proposes that generics could be divided into two kinds depending on whether they contain trivial or real exceptions, elaborating on Yoon's analysis. It is further proposed that one kind of generics is characterizing statements based on the salient properties of "whole" sets while the other kind is characterizing statements based on the salient properties of "representative" sets. It will be shown that this approach better accounts for the acceptable and unacceptable generic statements.