Free choice, modals, and imperatives

@article{Aloni2007FreeCM,
  title={Free choice, modals, and imperatives},
  author={Maria Aloni},
  journal={Natural Language Semantics},
  year={2007},
  volume={15},
  pages={65-94}
}
  • M. Aloni
  • Published 29 June 2007
  • Philosophy
  • Natural Language Semantics
The article proposes an analysis of imperatives and possibility and necessity statements that (i) explains their differences with respect to the licensing of free choice any and (ii) accounts for the related phenomena of free choice disjunction in imperatives, permissions, and statements. Any and or are analyzed as operators introducing sets of alternative propositions. Free choice licensing operators are treated as quantifiers over these sets. In this way their interpretation can be sensitive… 
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201 Citations
Highly Influential Citations
26
Background Citations
75
Methods Citations
21
Results Citations
4

201 Citations

Permission and Choice

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A logical account of free-choice imperatives

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Simplifying with Free Choice

This paper offers a unified semantic explanation of two observations that prove to be problematic for classical analyses of modals, conditionals, and disjunctions: (1) the fact that disjunctions…

Expressing permission

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Sluicing on free choice

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Free choice of alternatives

This paper contributes to the semantic typology of dependent indefinites, by accounting for the distribution and interpretation of the Romanian indefinite vreun. It is shown that its occurrences are…

Pick some but not all alternatives

This work makes use of the independently established fact that imperatives can give rise to weak free choice inferences (akin to partial variation) to enable a uniform characterization of the contexts of occurrence of vreun as contexts that satisfy the partial variation requirement imposed by vre un.
...

References

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This article proposes a new analysis of modal expressions which (i) explains the difference between necessity and possibility modals with respect to the licensing of Free Choice any and (ii) accounts…

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The goal of this article is to explain the distribution and meaning of qualsiasi/qualunque in the examples in (1). Universal FC items will be analysed as indefinites (contra Dayal, 1998). Following…

Free Choice Disjunction and Epistemic Possibility

This paper offers an explanation of the fact that sentences of the form (1) ‘X may A or B’ may be construed as implying (2) ‘X may A and X may B’, especially if they are used to grant permission. It…

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