Generics

Generics are statements such as “doctors heal people,�? “a tiger is striped,�? “the dodo is extinct,�? “a duck lays eggs,�?,“kettles boil water,�? and “mosquitoes carry the West Nile virus.�? Generic statements express general claims about kinds and categories, rather than claims about particular individuals. In English, generics can be expressed using a variety of syntactic forms: bare plurals (e.g. “ducks lay eggs�?), indefinite singulars (e.g. “a tiger is striped�?), and definite singulars (“the dog is a mammal�?).