The Existential and the Quasi-universal Readings of Bare Plurals

Abstract

Condoravdi (1992, 1994) proposes that bare plurals have the so-called quasi-universal reading, in addition to the generic and the existential readings. She argues that bare plurals may presuppose their descriptive content, but not their index, which satisfies the so-called weak novelty felicity condition. Meanwhile, this so-called quasi-universal reading of bare plurals is proposed as the generic reading by Dobrovie-Sorin (1998). She accounts for the lack of lawlikeness in this generic reading with the episodic context of the sentence in question. Given this, Cohen (2005) argues that although Dobrovie-Sorin proposes the quasi-universal reading as the generic reading, we are still left with three kinds of readings for bare plurals unless she provides a unified semantics for generics. On the other hand, Cohen proposes that there is no need to stipulate the quasi-universal reading of bare plurals if the suitability implicature is employed. Given these, this paper reviews Condoravdi's (1992, 1994), Dobrovie-Sorin's (1998), and Cohen's (2005) theories, and concludes that we still need the third reading of bare plurals, i.e., the quasi-universal reading, pointing out some problems of Cohen's theory, which is based on the suitability implicature.