Even and free choice any in Hungarian

Abstract

This paper presents an analysis of the Hungarian free-choice indefinite akárki ‘anyone’. It is observed that akárki is composed of a special type of focus particle akár ‘even’ which itself, in its focus-particle existence has a free-choice-like distribution, and of a wh-indefinite. To account for the special properties of akár ‘even’, it is argued that akár is composed of even plus an Exhaustive Operator (O). As the additive presupposition of even and the lexical meaning of the Exhaustive Operator are contradictory, this combination results in ungrammaticality, unless a suitable operator (e.g. an existential modal or a DE operator) intervenes. In the second part of the paper it is shown that the core distribution of free choice indefinites in Hungarian simply follows from the meaning of the incorporated akár. The universal-like meaning of free choice items arises as an inference from the combination of the standard existential additive presupposition and the universal scalar presupposition.