Two types of quantificational modalized genericity and the interpretation of bare plurals and indefinite singular NPs

The main goal of this paper is to develop a formal analysis which accounts for both the strong similarities, as well as a number of unexpected differences between two types of generic sentences in English, which minimally contrast in the type of subject: those with indefinite singular subjects, as in (1) (IS sentences, henceforth), and those with bare plural subjects, as in (2) (BP sentences, henceforth): (1) A grizzly bear snores very loudly (- An IS sentence) (2) Grizzly bears snore very loudly (- A BP sentence) I start (in section 1) by reviewing the uniform quantificational-modal representation traditionally assigned to minimal pairs like (1) and (2), and its advantages. In section 2 I present the problem for the uniform representation, namely a number of old, as well as newly observed differences between such minimal pairs. Section 3 deals with several attempts in the literature to characterize and explain these differences, and their shortcomings. My alternative account of both the similarities and differences between the two types of sentences is to take them, on the one hand, to have the same basic semantic structure (headed by a modalized generic quantifier, Gen), but to differ in the type of modality, i.e. the type of accessibility relation restricting Gen. The intuition behind this alternative, as well as the formal analysis are presented in section 4. In section 5 I show how the formal analysis accounts for the full range of similarities and differences between IS and BP sentences, presented above. Finally in section 6 I suggest a preliminary direction for deriving the semantic difference between the two types of sentences (in terms of their availability with the two distinct accessibility relations) from the distinct semantics of the IS and BP noun phrases subjects in these sentences