Generics and Context: Do Counterexamples Dissuade Acceptance of True Generic Statements?

Abstract This study investigates whether the salience of counterexamples in discourse affects the acceptance of true generic statements. Building on previous theoretical and experimental work on generics, we examine whether generics are sensitive to contextual cues that highlight exceptions. Polish participants completed a truth-value judgment task featuring majority and minority characteristic generics presented in two types of encyclopaedic contexts: neutral and exception-driven. The results show that plural generics were highly stable across contexts, while singular generics exhibited a small but statistically significant decrease in acceptance in exception-driven conditions. Predicate type also influenced judgments: minority generics were rated as less acceptable than majority ones. These findings support the view that generics display high tolerance of exceptions, with limited context effects attributable to heuristic misjudgment or anaphoric reinterpretation rather than semantic variability. The results further suggest that singular generics may invite more restrictive interpretations due to their morphosyntactic form.