영어 총칭문의 화용적 해석

A Pragmatic Interpretation of English Generic Sentences

This article is about habitual sentences subsumed under generic sentences. The main purpose of this paper is to suggest some pragmatic principles of resolving the semantic ambiguity (kind-habitual reading vs. existential-habitual reading) involved in the interpretation of habitual sentences. I assume that generics or habituality includes a sentential operator which can be expressed as the semantic constraints about habitual sentences. I argue that an adequate interpretation of habitual sentences is not entirely determined by such semantic constraints. I go on to show how the kind-habitual vs. existential-habitual reading ambiguity with respect to habituality can be successfully accounted for within the pragmatic division into ‘given’ and ‘new’ information related to the interpretation of indefinite NPs.