Paula Menendez-Benito will give a semantics talk on Tuesday, March 5, at 4:00PM in Machmer W-27. A title and abstract follow.
On Choosing Randomly
(joint work with Luis Alonso-Ovalle (McGill))
Many languages have indefinites that trigger modal inferences in the absence of an overt modal. Some of these items signal speaker’s ignorance. Others indicate that an agent made a random choice. While the former type has received a lot of attention in recent years (see Alonso-Ovalle and Mene ́ndez-Benito (to appear) for references), random choice indefinites are comparatively less studied (but see Choi (2007); Choi and Romero (2008); Alonso-Ovalle and Mene ́ndez-Benito (2011)). This talk paves the way towards a better understanding of random choice indefinites by analyzing the interpretation and distribution of Spanish "uno cualquiera."
The sentence in (1) illustrates the random choice reading of "uno cualquiera": (1) can be understood as saying that Juan took a card and that his choice was indiscriminate. This reading has a restricted distribution. Cases like (1), where "uno cualquiera" is in object position, are ambiguous between the random choice reading and an evaluative reading that conveys that Juan took an unremarkable card (and is compatible with him having chosen the card carefully.) In subject position, only the evaluative reading is available: (2) can only mean that an unremarkable student spoke.
(1) Juan cogio ́ una carta cualquiera.
John took a card CUALQUIERA.
(2) Hablo ́ un estudiante cualquiera.
Spoke a student CUALQUIERA
We argue that "uno cualquiera" introduces a modal component that is anchored to the event described by the sentence. This component derives the random choice reading of sentences like (1) (roughly, that the agent’s decision is compatible with any of a number of actions under consideration), and blocks the random choice reading of (2) by deriving a contradiction. Our proposal is in line with some recent work on verbal modality where modal domains are projected from small particulars (events or individuals), rather than from whole worlds (see Hacquard (2006, 2009); Kratzer (2012)).
