Journal Articles Journal of Semantics Year : 2024

Bare singular names and genericity

Abstract

Predicativists hold that proper names are count nouns with a predicative meaning, and treat bare singular names as predicative DPs headed by an unpronounced definite. However, bare singular names exhibit differences in grammatical behavior from ordinary definite singulars. One difference, it has been argued, is that while ordinary definite singulars can be interpreted generically, bare singular names cannot. This is not right: bare singular names can have generic uses. I present the evidence and offer an argument that generics with bare singular names are good news for predicativists.

Domains

Linguistics
Embargoed file
Embargoed file
1 9 28
Year Month Jours
Avant la publication
Thursday, November 19, 2026
Embargoed file
Thursday, November 19, 2026
Please log in to request access to the document

Dates and versions

hal-04791894 , version 1 (19-11-2024)

Identifiers

Cite

Luca Gasparri. Bare singular names and genericity. Journal of Semantics, 2024, ⟨10.1093/jos/ffae017⟩. ⟨hal-04791894⟩
9 View
0 Download

Altmetric

Share

More