A Generic Workshop Michael Henry Tessler goo.gl/vCT19a May 20, - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

A Generic Workshop Michael Henry Tessler goo.gl/vCT19a May 20, 2017 co-organized with Rachel Sterken (Oslo) & Bernhard Nickel (Harvard)

GENERICS

Dogs bark. Birds lay eggs. Sourdough starter makes bread rise. You never know what will happen on a blind date. John swims after work. Tall people are good at basketball.

“… do not express specific episodes or isolated facts, but instead report a kind of general property, that is, report a regularity which summarizes groups of particular episodes or facts” 
 (Krifka et al.,1995 in Carlson & Pelletier The Generic Book)

Generalizations are central to human understanding • Distillations of concrete observations and experiences • Support prediction and understanding “Because any object or situation experienced by an individual is unlikely to recur in exactly the same form and context, psychology’s first general law should , I suggest, be a law of generalization .” 
 - Roger Shepard (1987) 
 Toward a Universal Law of Generalization for Psychological Science.

Generalizations are 
 hard to acquire

Mature asparagus is poisonous.

Generalizations are 
 hard to acquire • Non-obvious relations between categories and properties • Trial-and-error learning is costly • Relevant events may not occur often 
 (low base-rate probability)

Language provides simple ways to communicate generalizations Mature asparagus is poisonous. • Generics are all over the place. • It is believed every language can express generic meaning (Behrens, 2005; Carlson & Pelletier, 1995)

LAN CO NITION GENERICS UAGE

Why are generics interesting? Convey generalizations People say them all the time They seem so simple

Truth Conditional Puzzles Dogs bark. [Most dogs bark.] Birds lay eggs. [Half (i.e., female) birds lay eggs.] *Birds are female. [Half (i.e., female) birds are female.] Mosquitos carry malaria. [Very few mosquitos carry malaria.]

Rich relations Bishops move diagonally. Lions roar. Arbitrary relations Barns are red. Ravens are bigger than toasters.

Philosophy Psychology Linguistics Computer Science

this generic workshop

Discussion questions 1. What insights about genericity can be gleaned from different methodologies 
 (experimental, philosophical, computational)? 2. In building theories of genericity, what can we learn from data/insights from language acquisition, cognitive development, social psychology, Natural Language Processing, pragmatics? 3. How can theories of genericity be extended to conceptual development and/or language acquisition? Should they be?

Thank you, CSLI and the Concept Lab!