SEMANTIC AND PRAGMATIC ASPECTS OF ENGLISH ANY- AND SLOVENE RANDOMNESS INDEFINITES

Abstract

The present paper discusses semantic and pragmatic features of English any-indefinites, and Slovene bare and koli-indefinites. In the Slovene linguistic literature, both bare and koli-indefinites have been known as randomness pronouns. However, examples from the Slovene reference corpus Gigafida 2.0 show that these indefinites are not always interchangeable, as their mutual name might suggest. Koli-indefinites strongly resemble any-indefinites, which are negative polarity items: they seek downward entailing environments in which they can but need not be stressed, depending on whether their inherent even-operator is highlighted or not. What is more, both any- and koli-indefinites necessarily acquire stress and generate free-choice inferences in non-downward entailing modal contexts. Slovene bare indefinites, on the other hand, share only certain features of unstressed any-indefinites: they behave like existential quantifiers and express the speaker’s ignorance or indifference. Unlike the any-series, the bare series can be used in the scope of non-adversative predicates and cannot trigger negative bias in questions. This might suggest that Slovene bare indefinites do not contain an even-operator. What is more, they are unable to generate free-choice readings, which are typical of any- and koli-indefinites.