#3800. Interpreting plural predication: homogeneity and non-maximality

October 2026publication date
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Philosophy;
Linguistics and Language;
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Abstract:
Plural definite descriptions across many languages display two well-known properties. While they tend to have a quasi-universal quantificational force in affirmative sentences, they tend to be interpreted existentially in the scope of negation. We offer a theory in which sentences containing plural definite expressions trigger a family of possible interpretations, and where general principles of language use account for their interpretation in various contexts and syntactic environments. Our theory solves a number of problems that these previous works encounter, and has broader empirical coverage in that it offers a precise analysis for sentences that display complex interactions between plural definites, quantifiers and bound variables, as well as for cases involving non-distributive predicates.
Keywords:
Definite descriptions; Homogeneity; Imprecision; Non-maximality; Pluralities

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