Our knowledge about the world is often expressed by generic sentences, yet their meanings are far from clear. This book provides answers to central problems concerning generics: what do they mean? Which factors affect their interpretation? How can one reason with generics? Cohen proposes that the meanings of generics are probability judgments, and shows how this view accounts for many of their puzzling properties, including lawlikeness. Generics are evaluated with respect to alternatives. Cohen argues that alternatives are induced by the kind as well as by the predicated property, and thus...

Linguistic distinctions between the notions of a phrase, a word, and their components are challenged by so-called particle verbs in German and similar features in other languages. Particle verbs look like single words, yet are typically assembled from word-like fragments that together behave more like components of a phrase than of a word. The resolution of existing scholarly ambivalence has exciting ramifications, from questioning the existence of particle verbs to a broader understanding of what constitutes a word.
Particle verbs have previously been analyzed as morphological objects or...