Referential properties of generic terms denoting things and situations

(~ene:x'ic terms cam be divided into two refercnbi:Qly different groups. Generic term oi" l,h~ :~':i~'st group is a name (or a definite dcsc.ci.ption) of the corresponding class of Objg>(;i;:~ (of° J~ ~:.i~ U a r s in South America ~i~'f. e~j~!.!~ci.; T h e w h a I e is a mammal). i!~ fo:-g~t].er:[c terms of the second group, we p,:'opose i;o treat them as genera], terms (in ~hc sense o±' WoOoQuine)." -they are considered -to be ~'eferentially incomplete expressions ~,~hiub.~ "when c o n s t i t u t i n g t h e th-eme o f a ge-, nez-i~: p,:,opus:i, t t o n , undergo quantification which :i.s exp : t ' e s s e ( J~ explicit],y o r implicit[!.y~ i n s i d e t h e verb phrase° ].o Ira-trod l o t i o n One of the mosl, important aspects of l angu~ge comp~-ehension is comprehension of ~.e f e _~ e n c e -,:L~e~ of a correspondence })etweez~ ~{ ~Je~itence (and some of its consbifriends) and reality, which is brought about by the speaker in the speech act. As is usual for a logical approach to language, all types of reference, with the exception of concrete reference, are reduced to quantification of different kinds, and quantification can be defined~ with a sufficient deg:L.ee o f p r e c : i s i o n , by s t a t i n g truth c o n d i t i ons fox' sen tences w i t h the c o r r e s p o n d i n g q u a n t i f i e r ° ~eanwhile generic expressions (j l .t ]:)atctJ.ou].ar~ gene ' r io te rms) c o n s t i t u t e a p u z z l e f o r a t h e o r y o f r e f e r e n c e , f o r any i)z, oposed formulation of truth conditions for .~Jentm:l.ces with generic terms is easily refuted by contradicting examples. Thus, an attempt to reduce referential meaning of the g(me:cic indefinite article in English to 'th~vl~ of the quantifier adjective (m~de in Jespersen 1927) can be demonstrated to be futile; in fact, statement (la), for exaunple, is usually considered to be true, while (lb) is definitely false (thougjl and all are synonyms): (1) a. N o r v e ~ c y vysokogo rosta w e g i a n s are tall' n o r v e ~ c y vysokogo 'E o r b. V s e rosta 'A 1 1 tall' n o r w e ~ i a n s are An attempt to capture referential aspects of the meaning of a generic term with the help of a "quantifier of majority" (Parsons 1970) or a quantifier 'usually' raay be, perhaps, successful for sentence (la), which is approximately synonymous to sentence (2): (2) N o r v e ~ c y oby~no ~ysokogo rosta 'N o r w e g i a n s are usually tall~ but the idea of majority has nothing to do with the meaning of such sentences as (3) Kit mlekopitaju~ee 'The whale is a m~al' (indeed, (3) ~ (3')*A whale is.usually a mammal); or with the meaning of sentence (4) A t o m sostoit iz jadra i elektronov 'A t o m consists of the nucleus and electrons'. A suggestion was made to the effect that generic terms do not refer to entities of the real world at all. Thus, according to Wierzbicka 1980, in such sentences as (1) tallness is attributed not to a norwegian (i.e. not to a real person), but to our i m a g e of a norwegian. However, this claim, even if it is true, cannot be true for all species of generic expressions. Por one thing, generic terms can occur in the context of identity sentences, cf. (5) Deti ~to budu~ie ljudl 'Children are men to be'. And what is identity'if not identity of re-