Make sure you know what the following concepts mean and how to use them appropriately: - indefinite description
- specificity
- distributive vs. collective vs. cumulative predication
- bare plural NP
- generic vs. existential reading
Make sure you understand: - why wide scope of an indefinite description yields specific readings, narrow scope nonspecific readings;
- that the semantics of plural NPs interact with the semantics of the predicate to yield distributive, collective, or cumulative predication (examples (8), (19)).
Make sure you know how to: - paraphrase and formalize specific vs. nonspecific readings of indefinite descriptions, and its interaction with other scopal expressions (examples (1-5));
- identify and paraphrase distributive, collective, and cumulative predication;
- how to formalize generic vs. existential readings of bare plural NPs (example (35)).
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