Licensing free choice "any" on an existential semantics for imperatives
Naomi Francis
June 2020
 

This paper seeks to explain why free choice "any" is licensed in strong imperatives and weak imperatives but not under strong modals. It argues that this contrast can be accounted for on the assumption that, instead of a strong (universal) modal, strong imperatives contain a weak (existential) modal that is strengthened by exhaustification (Schwager, 2005; Oikonomou, 2016). On this view, strong and weak imperatives have an identical structure at the point where the licensing of "any" is checked.
Format: [ pdf ]
Reference: lingbuzz/006952
(please use that when you cite this article)
Published in: Proceedings of Sinn und Bedeutung 24
keywords: any, free choice, imperatives, strengthening, semantics
Downloaded:170 times

 

[ edit this article | back to article list ]