Veneeta Dayal
Rutgers University
Free Choice
Any has recently resurfaced as an area of investigation, counterbalancing
the emphasis that had been put on Negative Polarity Any for many years.
This talk assesses our current understanding of FC Any by looking at
some recalcitrant cases, two examples of which are given below:
The Upper Bound
Problem: Someone tells a child, “You can take any toy in this room
that you like”. She finds on inspecting the set of toys in the room that
she likes three. She would be within her rights to pick up those three toys.
There is no upper bound on the NP set covered by the permission. However, it
has also been noted that if there are exactly three toys in the room, someone
can say, “You can take any two toys” but not “You can take any
three toys”. There seems to be an upper bound here.
Partitivity
and Modals: FC Any can occur freely with possibility modals: “You
can take any toy” but necessity modals often require the help of a modifier:
“You must take any toy *(you find).” However, partitive any
is only acceptable with possibility modals: “You can take any of these
toys. *“You must take any of these toys.” Adding a modifier doesn’t
help: *“You must take any of the toys you see”.
Among the issues discussed will be the role of domain widening, universal vs. existential quantification, and constraints on the use of any vs. a normal universal/existential determiner.
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