Genericity from a Cross-Linguistic Perspective

In this article, I will investigate genericity from a cross-linguistic perspective. After discussing some methodological and theoretical problems involved in this task, I will present a multidimensional approach, arguing that it is necessary to factor apart different types of information involved in the notion of genericity. In the empirical part, generic marking and interpretation in the nominal domain will be analyzed in terms of this approach for five languages: English, German, French, Hungarian, and Greek. As a result, I will claim a fundamental typological difference between QUALITY-marking languages (English) and DISCOURSE REFERENT-marking languages (French, Hungarian, Greek), with German representing a mixed type between the two.