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In formal semantics conservativity is a proposed
linguistic universal A linguistic universal is a pattern that occurs systematically across natural languages, potentially true for all of them. For example, ''All languages have nouns and verbs'', or ''If a language is spoken, it has consonants and vowels.'' Research ...
which states that any determiner D must obey the equivalence D(A,B) \leftrightarrow D(A, A\cap B). For instance, the English determiner "every" can be seen to be conservative by the
equivalence Equivalence or Equivalent may refer to: Arts and entertainment *Album-equivalent unit, a measurement unit in the music industry *Equivalence class (music) *''Equivalent VIII'', or ''The Bricks'', a minimalist sculpture by Carl Andre *'' Equival ...
of the following two sentences, schematized in
generalized quantifier In formal semantics, a generalized quantifier (GQ) is an expression that denotes a set of sets. This is the standard semantics assigned to quantified noun phrases. For example, the generalized quantifier ''every boy'' denotes the set of sets of ...
notation to the right. # Every aardvark bites. \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \rightsquigarrow every(A,B) # Every aardvark is an aardvark that bites. \ \ \rightsquigarrow every(A,A\cap B) Conceptually, conservativity can be understood as saying that the
elements Element or elements may refer to: Science * Chemical element, a pure substance of one type of atom * Heating element, a device that generates heat by electrical resistance * Orbital elements, parameters required to identify a specific orbit of ...
of B which are not elements of A are not relevant for evaluating the truth of the
determiner phrase In linguistics, a determiner phrase (DP) is a type of phrase headed by a determiner such as ''many''. Controversially, many approaches, take a phrase like ''not very many apples'' to be a DP, headed, in this case, by the determiner ''many''. This i ...
as a whole. For instance, truth of the first sentence above does not depend on which biting non-aardvarks exist. Conservativity is significant to semantic theory because there are many logically possible determiners which are not attested as
denotation In linguistics and philosophy, the denotation of an expression is its lit