I contrast two approaches to the interpretation of generics such as ‘ravens are black:’ majority-based views, on which they are about what is the case most of the time, and inquiry-based views, on which they are about a feature we focus on in inquiry. I argue that majority-based views face far more systematic counterexamples than has previously been supposed. They cannot account for generics about kinds with multiple characteristic properties, such as ‘elephants live in Africa and Asia.’ I then go on to sketch an inquiry-based view.
The paper discusses comparative generic sentences As are F-er than
Bs—girls do better than boys in grade school, for example—which pose severe problems for extant accounts. In their stead, the paper proposes reconceiving the LF of generic sentences as more closely akin to that of sentences containing non-generic plurals, paradigmatically plural definite descriptions. Given this one crucial change, several otherwise puzzling features of comparative generics are immediately explicable, including their relatively weak truth conditions and some of the logical relations they enter into.
