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} }
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…
223 Citations
Permission and Choice
- Philosophy
- 2012
This paper provides an analysis of two related properties of imperatives: (i) their variation in discourse function and (ii) their licensing of free choice inferences. With regard to (i), it is…
Licensing free choice any on an existential semantics for imperatives
- Philosophy
- 2020
This paper seeks to explain why free choice any is licensed in strong imperatives and weak imperatives but not under strong modals. It argues that this contrast can be accounted for on the assumption…
A logical account of free-choice imperatives
- Philosophy
- 2013
An account in which imperatives are regarded as partial specifications of a set of options is proposed and shows that this account avoids Ross’s paradox and gives rise to a sensible notion of imperative entailment.
(Partially) Free choice of alternatives
- Linguistics
- 2014
It is shown that the Romanian indefinite vreun occurrences are restricted to negative polarity and a subset of modal contexts, and it is proposed that the epistemic constraint arises from the lexicalization of an inference that non-epistemic operators can never satisfy.
Free choice is a form of dependence
- Philosophy
- 2016
This paper refutes the widespread view that disjunctions of imperatives invariably grant free choice between the actions named by their disjuncts. Like other disjunctions they can also express a…
Free choice is a form of dependence
- PhilosophyNatural Language Semantics
- 2016
This paper refutes the widespread view that disjunctions of imperatives invariably grant free choice between the actions named by their disjuncts. Like other disjunctions they can also express a…
Simplifying with Free Choice
- PhilosophyTopoi
- 2017
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…
Simplifying with Free Choice
- Philosophy
- 2018
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
- Philosophy
- 2016
This paper proposes a semantics for free choice permission that explains both the non-classical behavior of modals and disjunction in sentences used to grant permission, and their classical behavior…
Sluicing on free choice
- Philosophy
- 2019
It is argued that the time-honored ‘I don’t know which’-riders on Free Choice sentences, traditionally taken to show that the effect is pragmatic, are sensitive to scope.
References
SHOWING 1-10 OF 53 REFERENCES
FREE CHOICE IN MODAL CONTEXTS
- Philosophy
- 2003
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…
FREE CHOICE AND EXHAUSTIFICATION: AN ACCOUNT OF SUBTRIGGING EFFECTS
- Philosophy
- 2005
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
- Philosophy
- 2000
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…
Free Choice Items and Alternatives
- Philosophy
- 2005
Extending the proposal made by Schulz (2003), we put forward a pragmatic account of the meaning of existential and universal FC items, where the ‘ignorance or indierence’ inference triggered by the…
The Semantics of Imperatives within a Theory of Clause Types
- Linguistics
- 2004
The contrast between imperatives and promissives brings out the issue well. These two types are functionally very similar: An imperative places a requirement on the addressee, while a promissive…
On choice-offering imperatives
- Philosophy
- 2003
An analysis of modal expressions is extended to imperatives to allow a unified account of the phenomena in (1)-(4) and this article will start by presenting the ‘alternative’ analysis for indefinites and disjunction.
The Meaning of Free Choice
- Linguistics
- 2001
This paper discusses the distribution and interpretation of free choice items (FCIs) in Greek, a language exhibiting a lexical paradigm of such items distinct from that of negative polarity items, and argues that FCIs are not universal quantifiers but indefinites.
Any as Inherently Modal
- Philosophy
- 1998
It is argued that FC any is not directly licensed by modal or generic operators as generally assumed but that its felicitous use is sensitive to the pragmatics of epistemic modality.
Entertaining Alternatives: Disjunctions as Modals
- Philosophy
- 2005
Following Zimmermann (2000), I propose that disjunctions are to be treated as conjunctions of modal propositions, and that the essential contribution of ‘or’ is merely to present a list of…
Epistemic Containment
- PhilosophyLinguistic Inquiry
- 2003
This article concerns a new constraint on the interaction of quantifier phrases and epistemic modals. It is argued that QPs cannot bind their traces across an epistemic modal, though it is shown that…