Milsarks Generalization and Categorical Judgments

Abstract

In the view expressed here, sentences with bare NP subjects (or, equivalently, the propositions represented by them) are of one kind, generic/existential, representing the same type of propositions, whether they are SL or IL (Thesis 1); the different construals of the subjects, either as generic or existential, are a matter of pragmatic choices of domains. More generally, logical representations of sentences are not semantic representations (Thesis 2). The original form of Milsarks generalization is about an epiphenomenon (Thesis 3) and needs no account (or, is accounted for by the recognition that it represents an epiphenomenon). However, we recognize a characteristic difference between SL and IL sentences with respect to the referential construal of indefinite NPs, the Residue of Milsarks generalization (Thesis 4). The original epiphenomenon is couched in the distinction between SL/IL predicates, but when this epiphenomenon disappears as an epiphenomenon, what is left, the residue, is what couched it.