An experimental investigation of the expression of genericity in English, Spanish and Brazilian Portuguese

This study examines NPs in generic environments cross-linguistically. According to the semantic literature, NPs obtain generic readings from two sources: characterizing sentences (Lions are dangerous) and kind-reference (Dodo birds are extinct). English, Spanish and Brazilian Portuguese are known to differ in the types of NPs (definite vs. indefinite; singular vs. plural) that are allowed in the two types of environments, but there is disagreement in the literature concerning (i) the status of bare (article-less) NPs in generic environments in Brazilian Portuguese; and (ii) whether singular and/or plural generics are restricted to canonical kinds cross-linguistically. The broader goal of this paper is to use experimental methodology to resolve these disagreements; the more specific goal is to test the theoretical proposal of Dayal (2004), which makes testable predictions for the distribution of generic NPs cross-linguistically. The results of Acceptability Judgment Tasks with native speakers of English, Spanish, and Brazilian Portuguese provide support for Dayal's proposal that plural generics cross-linguistically denote kinds, while definite singular generics denote taxonomic entities. These findings highlight the value of experimentally testing the predictions of semantic theories, and pose questions for further research.