Analyticity under Perspective: Indefinite Generics in French

Abstract

Starting from the observation that a sentence like ??a dog is intelligent is difficult in the generic domain in the same way as ??a student is shy is in the existential one, this paper argues that as for the existential reading, the generic interpretation of the indefinites also needs a “context”. Adopting an explicit modal interpretation of GEN, our account builds on Greenberg (2002) insight that indefinite generic sentences require a special kind of modal bases. After pointing out some shortcomings of Greenberg’s theory, we propose an account of point of views as restrictors of modal bases. We represent point of views as world-judge pairs à la Ross (1997) and show that, besides modals, which always rescue indefinite generic sentences different phenomena like contrast, focus, evaluative adverbs and evidential uses of propositional attitude verbs are also manifestations of point of views.