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Non-Verbal Generics| old_uid | 10346 |
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| title | Non-Verbal Generics |
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| start_date | 2011/11/07 |
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| schedule | 16h-18h |
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| online | no |
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| location_info | Amphithéâtre |
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| details | Gergely Csibra and György Gergely will be awarded the Jean-Nicod Prize after the lecture // Remise du Prix Jean-Nicod après la conférence |
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| summary | Non-verbal demonstratives, like pointing to something or showing something up, pick out their referents as particular objects or sets of objects individuated by spatial means. Despite of this, we have repeatedly found in studies with human infants, children, and adults that, when such gestures are used ostensively and the context does not suggest otherwise, they are taken to refer to the object kind that the referent represents rather than to the particular object present in the context. This paradoxical phenomenon of non-verbal demonstrative reference to kinds parallels some core properties of generic linguistic expressions. In particular, generic constructions are unmarked, there is a 'default' bias towards generic interpretation of ambiguous sentences, and the predicates of generic expressions are expected to reflect essential, kind-relevant properties that are tolerant to counterexamples. We argue that non-verbal demonstrative reference shares these properties, which reflect fundamental design features of the cognitive mechanisms subserving human ostensive communication. |
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| responsibles | Lesguillons |
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