Bare plurals in articleless languages as weak definites

Tamari Berulava (Georg-August Universität Göttingen)
Clemens Mayr (Georg-August Universität Göttingen)

Are bare plurals (BPs) in articleless languages in episodic contexts always interpreted existentially, or are they ambiguous between definite and narrow-scope existential interpretations? Based on novel data from Georgian, Russian, Hindi, Chinese, Farsi, and Turkish, we argue for a third option, extending suggestions by Dayal (2013): such BPs (possibly even in English) receive definite interpretations. Apparent existential readings are instances of the familiar non-maximal interpretation of definite plurals. In particular, the relevant silent type-shifter is argued to be a weak definite operator based on maximality, in contrast to the strong one based on familiarity (e.g. Heim 1982, Schwarz 2009}.