Full Idea
If I say "Hawks fly", I do not intend my hearer to deduce that a hawk with a broken wing will fly. What we expect depends on the whole network of belief. Language describes experience as a network, not sentence by sentence.
Gist of Idea
Understanding a sentence involves background knowledge and can't be done in isolation
Source
Hilary Putnam (Representation and Reality [1988], §1 p.09)
Book Reference
Putnam,Hilary: 'Representation and Reality' [MIT 1992], p.9
A Reaction
The shortcut through this is 'exactly what did you mean when you said "Hawks fly"?'. That is, get me closer to your proposition.