Speaker: Janek Guerrini (Institut Jean Nicod, ENS)
Title: Revisiting kind predication
Time: Thursday, April 20th, 12:30pm – 2pm
Abstract: It is well-known that referential plurals support both collective predication with predicates of pluralities (‘the students are numerous’) and distributive predication with predicates of individuals (‘the students are blond’). Kind-referring plurals also support ‘collective’ kind predication, as in ‘birds are widespread’ (Carlson, 1977). However, with predicates of individuals, as in ‘birds fly’, it is usually assumed that there is no direct, distributive application of the predicate to the kind, but instead generic quantification on members of the kind (Krifka et al, 1995; Chierchia, 1998 a.o.). In this work, I argue that in sentences with predicates of individuals, kind-denoting plurals actually give rise to both logical forms: one that features generic quantification, and one that involves distributing a property directly over members of the kind. I then show how this insight resolves a number of long-standing puzzles in genericity.