1 Plural Reference and Reference to a Plurality. A Reassessment of the Linguistic Facts

There are two fundamentally different views of the semantics of definite plural NPs. I will call them ‘Reference to a Plurality ’ and ‘Plural Reference’. Reference to a Plurality is the view that definite plurals stand for a particular sort of entity, a plurality, more precisely a plurality ‘as one’. 1 There are different formal conceptions of pluralities as ‘one’: as sums within extensional mereology or as sets or classes. On the extensional mereological view, which is the dominant one in current linguistic semantics, the semantics of a definite plural NP will look as in (1a), where s is the relevant situation containing a restricted domain of entities: 2 (1) a. [the children] s = sum([children] s) Plural Reference is the view that definite plural NPs stand for several individuals at once. 3 On that view, the children refers to each child in the relevant situation at once. Moreover, a (one-place) predicate with a definite plural will have to be true of each individual that the plural term stands for at once, to give a true sentence: (1) b. The children are happy is true iff are happy is true at once of all the xx of which children is true at once. Plural Reference goes along with plural logic, a logic that contains besides singular variables and singular terms plural variables of the sort ‘xx’, ‘yy’, …, variables that are assigned