Free Choice Indefinites in Old and Modern Italian

Authors

  • Olga Kellert

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.18148/hs/2021.v5i1-13.82

Keywords:

free choice, evaluative italian

Abstract

This article deals with a specific meaning of Free Choice Indefinites (FCIs) such as qualunqueand qualsiasi in Old and Modern Italian. Despite the existent synchronic and diachronic studies of FCIs that focus on the prenominalposition as represented in (2) (see Aloni & Port 2013, Chierchia 2006, Stark 2006, Becker 2014,among others), there are no synchronic or diachronic studies focusing on the postnominalposition with the evaluative meaning. It is still unclear what distribution postnominal indefiniteshave in synchrony and diachrony and what the relation between prenominal indefinites with theFC meaning and postnominal indefinites with the evaluative meaning is (see also A&M 2011on cualquiera in Spanish).In this article, I will try to fill the gap with respect to qualunque and describe its distribution, aswell as its syntactic and semantic properties in synchrony and diachrony. My main focus willbe answering the question of how Italian qualunque developed an evaluative meaningcomponent and why this interpretation is only available when qualunque is postnominal.

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Published

2021-01-25