Adverbs of Quantification and Genericity

The main empirical claim made in the paper is that in characterizing habitual sentences (e.g., A bird flies), a relational default Q-adverb that quantifies over individuals co-occurs with a default frequency adverb that binds a time-variable. Correspondingly, such sentences express generalizations over individuals (to which a habitual property is attributed), rather than generalizations over episodic events. I then argue that adverbial quantification over individuals must be directly represented at LF, rather than derived from quantification over events. I will further show that adverbial quantification over events can be adequately represented within a framework that dispenses with event-variables.