Generics, Covert Structure and Logical Form

The standard view amongst philosophers of language and linguists is that the logical form of generics is quantificational and contains a covert, unpronounced quantifier expression Gen . Recently, some theorists have begun to question the standard view and rekindle the competing proposal, that generics are a species of kind‐predication. These theorists offer some forceful objections to the standard view, and new strategies for dealing with the abundance of linguistic evidence in favour of the standard view. I respond to these objections and show that their strategies fail. I offer a novel argument in favour of the standard view that I call the binder argument . The upshot of this argument is that if one rejects the existence of Gen , then one is committed to rejecting the existence of covert structure in general (including domain variables and implicit argument places).