Generics, Frequency Adverbs, and Probability

ad. Again, note that people who judge (35) to be bad may consider the age
partition to be salient in this case.
Note that age constitutes a numerical scale; we can order people linearly
according to their age. In many, perhaps all cases, scales may induce a salient
partition. For example:
(36) a. Buildings are less than 1000 feet tall.
b. Animals weigh less than two tons.
c. Shoes are size 7 and above.
All the properties predicated in the sentences in (36) hold of the vast majority
of the individuals in their domain (but not all of them), yet these sentences
are odd. This can be explained if numerical scales induce salient partitions,
since height, weight and shoe size are all numerical scales. An investigation
into the nature of scales (see Horn 1972; Hirschberg 1985) may shed some
light on the factors which determine the saliency of a partition.
Gender
Gender is often a salient partition too.
Thus, although the majority of
primary school teachers are female, (20.f), repeated below, is odd:
(37) Primary school teachers are female.
The reason is that, if we partition the set of teachers according to their
gender, there will obviously be a set, the probability of whose members to
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