[Grammar] There are a lot of goods in this shop. The goods are good.

[nik4]

Hello!

As I know, when saying "the + plural", it can often mean "probably most" of the items (Like in "The students of my university are fine" - The size of the group is large enough to have some exceptions to general statement (so there can be some students that are not fine).

But what happens when we use the second mention of items? Does this rule still work?

There are sentences:
There are a lot of goods in this shop. The goods are good.
I got several thousand new instruments. The instruments are good. (Assuming the listener knew nothing I would get any)

Can it mean that most of them are good?
Please, help. Thanks.

 

[Tarheel]

Re:

There are a lot of goods in this shop. The goods are good.

​

"The goods are good" is just weird. Also funny.

Re:

I got several thousand new instruments. The instruments are good.

​

I would pretty much assume that all of them are good (usable; in good shape). (Why would you get bad instruments?)

 

[Grumpy]

No native speaker would ever use such a sentence structure. You would say something like "There are a lot of excellent goods in this shop".
If you did want to add a second sentence specifying the quality of the items, then you would have to be more specific. For example: "I have got several thousand new instruments in my shop. All of them are in first class condition". Or you could say "I have just taken delivery of several thousand second-hand instruments. Most of them are in excellent working order, but some need to be repaired."

 

[Barb_D]

I read "I got" as "I received."