TY - JOUR AU - Abrusán, Márta PY - 2019/08/06 Y2 - 2024/03/28 TI - Even and free choice any in Hungarian JF - Proceedings of Sinn und Bedeutung JA - SuB VL - 11 IS - 0 SE - Articles DO - 10.18148/sub/2007.v11i0.627 UR - https://ojs.ub.uni-konstanz.de/sub/index.php/sub/article/view/627 SP - 1-15 AB - <p>This paper presents an analysis of the Hungarian free-choice indefinite <em>akárki</em> ‘anyone’. It is observed that <em>akárki</em> is composed of a special type of focus particle <em>akár</em> ‘even’ which itself, in its focus-particle existence has a free-choice-like distribution, and of a <em>wh</em>-indefinite. To account for the special properties of <em>akár</em> ‘even’, it is argued that <em>akár</em> is composed of <em>even</em> plus an Exhaustive Operator (O). As the additive presupposition of <em>even</em> 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 <em>akár</em>. 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.</p> ER -