In common parlance you don’t need to qualify generalisations when it’s obvious to the audience that they are generalisations.
Consider a statement like “Australians like to eat Vegemite on toast for breakfast”.
It’s an absurdity to refute that statement on the basis that it’s an unqualified generalisation. It’s very obvious to everyone that not every Australian enjoys Vegemite, and that some Australian’s probably enjoy Vegemite at other times of the day. The whole point of the sentence is to convey that Australians are more likely to enjoy Vegemite than people of other nations.
If you’d like to spend your life refuting every general assertion on the basis that it’s not qualified by saying “some” Australians enjoy Vegemite then I guess you’re welcome to do so, but it seems like a very odd proclivity to me.
Is that sentence structure ambiguous?
If you said “Iron Age men fought with Iron Swords” you wouldn’t say that statement is clearly false because it’s not true of all iron age men.
I mean, I would. I’m sure there were at least a few flint axes still in use
You seem to have missed my point.
In common parlance you don’t need to qualify generalisations when it’s obvious to the audience that they are generalisations.
Consider a statement like “Australians like to eat Vegemite on toast for breakfast”.
It’s an absurdity to refute that statement on the basis that it’s an unqualified generalisation. It’s very obvious to everyone that not every Australian enjoys Vegemite, and that some Australian’s probably enjoy Vegemite at other times of the day. The whole point of the sentence is to convey that Australians are more likely to enjoy Vegemite than people of other nations.
If you’d like to spend your life refuting every general assertion on the basis that it’s not qualified by saying “some” Australians enjoy Vegemite then I guess you’re welcome to do so, but it seems like a very odd proclivity to me.
I miss every point, I’m far too fast