类指句容许例外是否是自然语言的普遍属性

Is Exception-tolerance of Generic Sentences a Universal Property of Natural Languages?

类指句能在不同程度上允许例外的存在而不改变句子的真值,这一特征给类指句的语义研究带来了极大的挑战,这也正是类指句的魅力所在。近年来,这一课题的研究热度不断攀升,各种观点争议不断。本文针对类指句容许例外这一特点主要选取了量化分析、认知分析、对类直接述谓的简单分析和语用分析这几种文献中影响力较大的理论,对类指句的研究进展作一评述。最后,本文对容许例外这一问题进行了一定的思考,认为容许例外这一性质也许并不特殊,而是自然语言的一种普遍属性。

A central property of generic sentences is the well-known tolerance to exceptions,which brings a big challenge to the linguistic research of generics.In recent years,generics have remained a popular topic in semantics.However,no consensus has been reached.This paper presents an overview of the issue of exception-tolerance of generic sentences as well as some influential analyses that have been advanced in the current literature,including quantificational approach,cognitive approach,kind-predication approach,and pragmatic approach。The paper also makes some reflection on tolerance to exceptions.Following Liebesman(2011),we assume that exception-tolerance is not peculiar to generic sentences,but a universal property of natural languages.The underlying mechanism of exception-tolerance of generic sentences is the property inheritance of the whole from its parts which is very common in ordinary predications such as The towel is wet.Generic sentences are direct predications of a certain property possessed by the abstract individual"kinds".Kinds have their own members which are spatiotemporally bounded concrete objects.A kind and its members constitute part-whole relations.In the sense of parts and wholes,the semantics of generic sentences is not as complicated as most of the previous studies have considered.The so-called exception-tolerance is actually a universal property of natural languages.Generic sentences are simple kind-predications,on par with ordinary atomic sentences.This paper provides a new perspective and implications for the controversies in semantic theories of generics.