Abstract
The ellipsis of a VP whose antecedent contains an occurrence of so-called free choice any is highly constrained: it is acceptable only if the elided VP is appropriately embedded. We show that while this is unexpected on the common approaches to free choice and ellipsis, it is predicted on a theory of any that takes its domain to stand in a dependency relation with a c-commanding alternative-sensitive operator (cf. Lahiri 1998, Focus and negative polarity in Hindi. Natural Language Semantics 6(1). 57-123) and that takes free choice inferences to be generated by covert exhaustification in grammar (e.g., Fox 2007, Free choice and the theory of scalar implicatures. In Uli Sauerland & Penka Stateva (eds.), Presupposition and implicature in compositional semantics, 71-120. Palgrave Macmillan; Chierchia 2013, Logic in grammar. Oxford: Oxford University Press).
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 249-294 |
| Number of pages | 46 |
| Journal | Linguistic Review |
| Volume | 34 |
| Issue number | 2 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - 26 Oct 2017 |
Bibliographical note
Publisher Copyright:© 2017 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston.
Keywords
- VP ellipsis
- even
- free choice
- parallelism
- polarity items