Leibniz-Zentrum Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft Leibniz-Gemeinschaft

Some remarks on free choice

Vortragende(r) Crnic, Luka
Institution(en) The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Datum 01.10.2019
Uhrzeit 15:00 Uhr
Ort ZAS, room 403

The acceptability of any in existential modal sentences, as in Mary is allowed to read any book, has often been taken to militate against a uniform treatment of any as an existential quantifier (e.g., Ladusaw 1979, Dayal 1998, i.a.). Such a treatment is possible, however, on the assumption that any is accompanied in modal sentences by a mechanism that strengthens its existential import into a universal one. Several different proposals about the nature of this mechanism have been put forward (e.g., Kadmon 1993, Lahiri 1998, Aloni 2007, Menéndez-Benito 2010, Chierchia 2013 for a selection). I discuss new predictions for the distribution of any that follow from the assumption that this mechanism is covert exhaustification (see Chierchia 2013, Crnic 2017, 2019 for different implementations). Some related issues are addressed as well. The talk is based partly on joint work with Andreas Haida