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Description:
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This monograph is a comprehensive study of the various ways in which
genericity can be expressed in Dutch, dialects of Dutch, and languages
related to Dutch. On the basis of empirical (corpus- and
questionnaire-based) data, a wide range of topics are discussed which have
been addressed in the literature on the semantics and pragmatics of
generics. The empirical data presented in this book shed new light on
issues crucial to the study of genericity. A number of widely accepted
ideas are shown to be problematic. For example, arguments are presented
against the well-known claim that progressive forms typically exclude
characterizing interpretations. Furthermore, the author shows that speakers
do not agree in their judgements of the acceptability of bare plurals (as
well as other noun phrase types) in generic contexts. Such data are a
problem for the influential thesis that bare plurals refer to kinds
unambiguously.
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