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A Generic Workshop
Michael Henry Tessler May 20, 2017 co-organized with Rachel Sterken (Oslo) & Bernhard Nickel (Harvard)
goo.gl/vCT19a
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, - - 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
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Dogs bark. Birds lay eggs. Tall people are good at basketball. John swims after work. You never know what will happen on a blind date. Sourdough starter makes bread rise.
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“… 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
- r facts”
(Krifka et al.,1995 in Carlson & Pelletier The Generic Book)
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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.
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Generalizations are hard to acquire
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Mature asparagus is poisonous.
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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)
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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)
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LAN UAGE CO NITION GENERICS
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Why are generics interesting?
People say them all the time They seem so simple Convey generalizations
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Truth Conditional Puzzles
Dogs bark. [Most dogs bark.] Birds lay eggs. [Half (i.e., female) birds lay eggs.] Mosquitos carry malaria. [Very few mosquitos carry malaria.] *Birds are female. [Half (i.e., female) birds are female.]
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Barns are red. Ravens are bigger than toasters. Bishops move diagonally. Lions roar.
Rich relations Arbitrary relations
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Philosophy Psychology Computer Science Linguistics
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this generic workshop
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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?
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Thank you, CSLI and the Concept Lab!