Bare plural

Bare plural refers to a plural noun phrase without an overt determiner.

Examples

Cats, or pretty girls with blond hair are bare plurals.

Comments

Bare plurals can have a generic interpretation (in (i)) or an existential interpretation (in (ii)):

• (i) Cats are intelligent.
• (ii) Cats ruined my garden.

Link

Utrecht Lexicon of Linguistics

Reference

Carlson, G. 1977. Reference to kinds in English. Ph.D. diss., University of Amherst.