More Truths about Generic Truth

International audienceIn Pelletier and Asher (1997) we presented a modal conditional analysis of the semantic interpretation of characterizing generics (in the terminology of Krifka et al. 1995). Since that time there have been a number of advances to our understanding of this area: Cohen (1999a,b, 2005), Leslie (2007, 2008), Nickel (2010), Sterken (2009). However, some of these advances have been seen as overthrowing the modal conditional analysis, and we think this is not correct. The present paper is a defense of the modal conditional analysis when it is augmented with information about prosody