Which itself is completely orthogonal to the point I was making. You can imagine I said “dinosaurs are extinct” and « les dinosaures ont disparu » if that makes you feel better.
> That is, at best, a highly informal proposition
That’s what it was meant as, yes, since you seemed to be misinterpreting what I was getting at (contents of the category as opposed to meta-commentary about the categorisation). The goal was to clarify, not to publish to an academic journal.
> Bare plurals can have generic or kind-related interpretations (the one you refer to as «category»); they do not entail reference to every individual member of the class: a mute cat can't meow, and a rotten apple is unlikely to be liked.
> That is, at best, a highly informal proposition
That’s what it was meant as, yes, since you seemed to be misinterpreting what I was getting at (contents of the category as opposed to meta-commentary about the categorisation). The goal was to clarify, not to publish to an academic journal.
> Bare plurals can have generic or kind-related interpretations (the one you refer to as «category»); they do not entail reference to every individual member of the class: a mute cat can't meow, and a rotten apple is unlikely to be liked.
Irrelevant.