The CERNAI team, within the context of the FIS2 GENERIC project, is pleased to announce the research seminar given by Dr. Dimitra Lazaridou-Chatzigoga (LZAS/Cambridge) titled “Generalisations in Language: A Cross-Linguistic Perspective on Generics.”

Date and Venue: September 23, 2026, from 11:00 to 13:00, Aula VI Giurisprudenza, University of Pavia.

Abstract: All languages are thought to have ways to express generalisations, such as ‘Leopards have spots’, ‘Dodo birds are extinct’ and ‘Canadians like hockey’. While much is known about generics in English and several closely related languages, they are not as well-understood across languages as other linguistic forms. Addressing this limitation, our Generics Across Languages program systematically studies a wide set of languages from different language families, using a newly developed toolkit that combines insights from formal linguistics, cognitive psychology, and semantic fieldwork elicitation techniques, focusing on their morphosyntax and semantics. In this talk, I will first discuss the motivation for this project and how it fits within the broader generics literature. I will then present our methodology and the Generics Toolkit we developed, whose primary component is a series of storyboards with embedded target sentences, focusing on different ontological categories including natural, artefact, and social kinds and targeting five key readings. The talk will showcase data from our current database, which comprises data from 19 languages, collected via our network of international collaborators. This work will facilitate an in-depth examination of proposed universals on generics, shedding light on their theoretical implications.

Everyone is invited to participate.

Check here the poster of the event.

Location

University of Pavia