The Semantics of Determiners

Johan Van Der Auwera, Johan Van Der Auwera

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781317933465
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Lingue e linguistica
• Subtopic: Linguistica

This book is a collection of linguistic and philosophical papers dealing with the semantic problems of determiners. The language under investigation is mostly English, although a few papers deal with French and German, and, to a lesser extent, with Dutch, Polish, Russian and Hebrew. The majority of the contributions focus on the semantics of the definite and indefinite articles, leading into discussions of anaphoricness, specificness, opacity and transparency, referentiality and attributiveness and genericness. The relation of the determiners to other parts of grammar, in particular relativisation and predication, is also investigated. Some attention is also given to quantifiers. In the spirit of pluralism, there is no single paradigm unifying all the papers, rather, the volume reflects elements of the Extended Standard Theory, Generative Semantics, Montague Grammar, (Gricean) Pragmatics and Speech Act Theory.

1	ANY AS UNIVERSAL OR EXISTENTIAL?^*

Alice Davison

1 Introduction

1.1 Some Well Known Facts

The occurrence of the indefinite determiner and pronoun any is restricted to two kinds of environments, and the interpretation of any is dependent on them. Unlike most quantifiers in English, any is dependent both for its interpretation and its well formed use on other elements in the sentence in which it is used. Sentences such as (1) are strange:

(1) a. * Anybody came.

b. * Anything wasn’t there.

Any has an existential understanding, like some or a, in what I want to designate Class A Contexts: positions commanded by negation, both overt and implied (Horn, 1972, forthcoming), if in both indicative and subjunctive conditionals and in yes/no questions.

(2)	a.	I didn’t see anything out there.
	b.	We didn’t have information that John had told anything to the police.
(3)	a.	If there are any whooping cranes here, my brother would know about it.
	b.	Even if he had said anything, they wouldn’t have believed him.
(4)	a.	Does any saucer fit this cup?
	b.	Is anything the matter?

In the second and third contexts, it is possible to substitute some (cf. R. Lakoff, 1969) with the more positive conveyed expectation that such a thing exists. In the first context, it is sometimes possible to substitute a, or one (cf. LeGrand, 1974).

Any has a ‘generic’ or ‘universal’ interpretation in another set of contexts, Class B, which is much less well defined than Class A and much more sensitive to extra-sentential factors about context of utterance and the intentions of the speaker to refer. These contexts will be discussed in later sections, but roughly speaking, they include may, can and will but not must; the generic present but not the progressive, past or perfect, imperatives but not statements, expressions of wishes, indirect expressions of requests, wh-questions, and in certain negative contexts.

(5)a. Anyone can/may/*must leave at any time.

b. (??Tomorrow) anyone will help you.

(6)a. (??Today) anyone has the price of a hamburger.

b. ??Anyone is building a house.

c. ??Anyone has arrived on time.

d. ??I talked with anyone yesterday.

(7)a. Come in any time.

b. ??We came any time.

(8)a. Take anything.

b. ??If only he would eat anything! (not taken as part of a con ditional sentence)

c. ??You should eat anything.

d. ??Would you/could you eat anything? (Odd as an indirect request with generic meaning for any)

(9)a. ?Who went anywhere today? (Odd in generic reading)

b. ??When did John eat anything? (Odd if = ‘when was John an omnivore?’)¹

(10) ? * Anyone can’t do that.

These environments may overlap, as Horn (1972) notes, and when this is the case, the clause is ambiguous between the ‘generic’ and the ‘existential’ readings of any.

(11)a. If (*just) anyone can do that, we will reward that person heavily.

b. If (just) anyone can do that, why should we pay John a huge salary?

Following Horn (1972), I will use just as an indicator of the generic reading; it need not be directly associated with any, however, as (12) shows.

(12) If anyone can (just) walk in, we’d better put a lock on the door.

(13)a. If (just) anyone can swim the English Channel, I can. (Horn, 1972,3.67)

b. If (just) anyone can be promoted to general, then anyone can be promoted to general.²

The sentences in (13) are ambiguous without just; with just, the two clauses in (13) b. have identical interpretations, so that it appears to mean ‘If p then P’. Without just, (13) b. has both this interpretation and another one, in which any is taken as equivalent to some in the if clause, which is a Class A environment. The same interpretation does not hold for the main clause, which contains only a Class B environment, and thus allows only the ‘generic’ interpretation. (13) b. would thus have an interpretation ‘If some person can be promoted to general, then any/every person can be promoted to general.’ Definition of classes of environments which favour one interpretation of any would predict that such ambiguities would occur, and they do.

Environments in Class A may combine to create the possibility of ambiguities. If and negation may combine, as in (14), or question and negation as in (15):

(14)a. If Clyde does not do any of these jobs, let me know.

b. If there is some job that Clyde does not do, let me know.

c. If Clyde fails to do (all of) these jobs, let me know.

(15)a. Did John not look anywhere?

b. Is there some place where John did not look?

c. Is it the case that John looked nowhere?

It is my (as yet unsubstantiated) feeling that the c. readings are the preferred ones, taking any to be in the scope of negation rather than If or Question. If so, then one would have to postulate some hierarchical relationship among them, such as Horn’s scales (1972). This point will be discussed further in connection with relative strength of quantifiers (cf. Ioup, 1975) and conversational implicature.

Not much has been said about the relationship between environments of Class A and those in Class B; for example, what factor might they have in common which permits the occurrence of any? Class A includes ‘non-actual’ environments, constructions whose meaning is compatible with the sentence as a whole being negated as well (as negation itself, overt or implied) (cf. Borkin, 1971). Class B includes modals and tenses having more than one possible referent – if one can speak of tenses referring to events or states of affairs. Class B excludes modals and tenses, and constructions which refer to a single definite state of affairs, or implicate such reference. The generic use of any is associated with sentences having no constituents taken from Class B, however, provided that there is a relative clause modifying the indefinite NP containing any. This relative clause provides some point of comparison with Class A.

For example, many of the bad sentences previously cited can be ‘cured’ with a relative clause, actually a restrictive relative clause:

(16) a. Anybody who can afford to is building a house, (cf. (6) b.)

b. Anyone who is really interested has arrived on time. (cf. (6)c.)

c. You should eat anything which is recommended by your chiropractor, (cf. (8) c.)

d. Where did anyone go today who went outside...