Bare plural

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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.

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