Problems in the representation of the logical form of generics, plurals, and mass nouns

Abstract

We wish to discuss some problems involved in representing the 'logical form' of sentences whose subjects are generics, (bare) plurals and mass terms. We shall not here have much to say about the syntax of such sentences, except occasionally to refer to such (arguably) syntactic features as [ ±stative]. We shall also not get embroiled in such issues as exactly what information should be counted as part of the 'logical form' of a sentence in general. We will, for example, remain agnostic on the question of the proper place for (Montague-style) meaning postulates, the proper place for Quantifier Raising, and the proper place for the representation of certain ambiguities involving quantifiers and other logical operations. Instead, om concern is with the final representation of certain natural language sentences, a represe11tation which is immediately correlated with the truth conditions of the original sentence. We take this to be more-or-less firstorder quantification theory augmented with certain operators, but feel free to bring in Montagovian intensional logic, expecial!y when discussing those

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