Sentenças genericamente quantificadas e expressões de referência a espécies no português brasileiro

Abstract

This article investigates the expression of genericity in Brazilian Portuguese. Its theoretical background is the analysis of kind referring expressions as proper names of kinds (cf. Carlson 1977a, b, 1982) and of generically quantified sentences as sentences under the scope of a generic dyadic operator (cf. Carlson 1989 and Krifka et al. 1995). Two basic claims are made: (i) the canonic way of expression kind denotation in Brazilian Portuguese is the definite generic and (ii) the generic indefinite and the bare singular are only ‘normal’ indefinite phrases under the scope of a generic operator.