The meaning of GENERIC in linguistics (one last word for now)

[Laurence Horn]

At 12:42 PM -0500 3/7/05, Mark A. Mandel wrote:
>Benjamin Zimmer quotes:
>    >>>>>
>http://amor.rz.hu-berlin.de/~h2816i3x/LexSemantik1.pdf
>
>An expression A is a HYPONYM (i.e. an "undername") of an expression B
>
>**iff everything that falls under B also falls under A**.
>
>                         In this case, B is
>called a HYPERONYM (i.e. an "overname"). Examples are 'dog' and
>'mammal', 'apple' and 'fruit', 'refrigerator' and 'appliance', 'king'
>and 'monarch', 'scarlet' and 'red', 'walk' and 'go'. [...]
>  <<<<<
>
>(1) That part is backward: it should be "iff everything that falls under
>**A** also falls under **B**". (2) And we also need the requirement that not
>everything that falls under B falls under A, because in that case they are
>synonyms.
>
>E.g., (1) all dogs (A) are mammals (B), but not all mammals are dogs, so
>"dog" is a hyponym of "mammal".
>
>-- Mark A. Mandel
>[This text prepared with Dragon NaturallySpeaking.]
>   "The last word" on ADS-L is like "the last bug" in programming.

heh heh.

another last word:  I've never liked "hyperonym", and prefer
"superordinate" for the converse of "hyponym", despite the fact that
it sounds like it should be the converse of "subordinate" instead.

And also on those A's and B's.   Mark is of course right, but so is
Manfred (at the above website).  It depends on whether you're talking
extensions (as Mark is) or intensions (as I'm assuming Manfred is).
That is, even though the extension of the superordinate, or if you
insist the hyperonym, e.g. "man", properly includes that of the
hyponym, e.g. "bachelor", in that all bachelors are men but not vice
versa, the intension or sense of the hyponym properly includes that
of the superordinate, in that "bachelor" is specified for all the
features "man" is, plus (at least) one additional feature, in this
case [- married].  Aristotle actually remarks on this at one point,
noting that the genus includes the species (the set of animals
includes the set of men), but the species also includes the genus
("man" includes "animal").

larry