Topic, Focus and the Interpretation of Bare Plurals

Abstract

It is well known that bare plurals (BPs) can receive generic or existential readings: (1) a. Boys are brave. b. Boys are hungry. 

Sentence (1.a) gets only a generic reading, namely that boys, in general, are brave. Sentence (1.b), on the other hand, is ambiguous; it can also receive a generic reading, namely that boys in general are hungry, but the dominant reading is existential: there are some hungry boys.

In this paper we argue that an account of topic and focus is crucial to the interpretation of BP's. In particular, generically interpreted BP's are topics, and nongenerically interpreted BPs are foci. The latter, we claim, are not existentially quantified variables, as is usually assumed, but are incorporated into the predicate and carry an implicature of suitability with respect to the topic.