Myung-Ki Oh. 2001. A Pragmatic Interpretation of English Generic Sentences. Studies in Modern Grammar 25, 191-209. This article is about habitual sentences subsumed under generic sentences. The main purpose of this paper is to suggest some pragmatic principles of resolving the semantic ambiguity (kind-habitual reading vs. existential-habitual reading) involved in the interpretation of habitual sentences. I assume that generics or habituality includes a sentential operator which can be expressed as the semantic constraints about habitual sentences. I argue that an adequate interpretation of habitual sentences is not entirely determined by such semantic constraints. I go on to show how the kind-habitual vs. existential-habitual reading ambiguity with respect to habituality can be successfully accounted for within the pragmatic division into `given` and `new` information related to the interpretation of indefinite Nps.

• 오명기 | Myung Ki Oh