Generics in information structure: exceptions versus counterexamples

Abstract

Why do we hold on to generic beliefs that serve explanations and our way of understanding the world, even if they run counter to facts or observational evidence with which they are incompatible? It often makes rational sense NOT to revise one’s belief, even if counterexamples abound, relegating them to the harmless status of exceptions, rather than disconfirming facts. Investigating the focus/background structure arising from the interaction between aspectual adverbs, tense and bare plurals requires an interface of all modules of grammar—the Information Structure—at which the content of statements with bare plurals in discourse can be determined in context and epistemological differences between exceptions and counterexamples are accounted for. Generic information is persistent in recalcitrant situations, because its explanatory force is “immunized” against counterevidence. “Immunization” of information against counterevidence is a new theoretical semantic concept given precise content in an epistemologically flavored semantics of generics.