Schedule 76. StuTS

In this talk, I present the results of my Bachelor’s thesis. I conducted a rating study in which German native speakers rated how well different sentences functioned for them as expressions of a generic or specific reading.
Generic statements express generalizations about kinds, such as Cats meow or A tiger is striped. In German, the subjects that the generalizations are made about can in principle be singular or plural, definite or indefinite, though it depends largely on the context which of the resulting four variants is actually used. Though much theoretical work on generics has been done, to my knowledge there is not one empirical study that surveys the whole spectrum of variation in German systematically. The present experiment may serve as a first step towards closing this gap.
Generics are also closely related to Psychological Essentialism, i. e. the tendency of the human mind to believe that members of a given category are (a) alike and (b) distinct from members of other categories in ways that are inherent, deeply meaningful and not always directly observable (Gelman 2003). This tendency to essentialize is not equally strong for all types of categories, but natural kinds (animals, plants, and natural substances) are more likely to be essentialized than social groups, which are in turn more likely than man-made objects (e.g. Brandone & Gelman 2010, 2013). I also investigate whether these domain differences influence the phrasing of generic nominals.
(references can be found online)

Brandone, A. C., & Gelman, S. A. (2009). Differences in preschoolers’ and adults’ use of generics about novel animals and artifacts: A window onto a conceptual divide. Cognition, 110(1), 1-22.
Brandone, A. C., & Gelman, S. A. (2013). Generic language use reveals domain differences in young children's expectations about animal and artifact categories. Cognitive development, 28(1), 63-75.
Gelman, S. A. (2003). The essential child: Origins of essentialism in everyday thought. Oxford University Press, USA.

Info

Day: 2024-11-22
Start time: 16:10
Duration: 00:30
Room: 00A02 CNMS
Track: Neuro- / Psycholinguistics
Language: en

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