Studies.AlonsoOvalleRoyer2024

Chuj yalnhej DPs are existential quantifiers with an at-issue modal component (59): some member of the domain satisfies restrictor and scope, and every member does so in some world of the content of the DP's event anchor (ModalExists, on Modality.contentPossibility). The DP's event variable is bound by the abstraction over the VP event (62), left free and read as the assertion (69)/(71), or bound by an external modal's anchor (87)/(91). A VP event projects the worlds where the decision that caused it is fulfilled, which gives random choice: an indiscriminate decision, or one to take everything, satisfies the component and a decision for one item does not (randomChoice, Fig. 1, (32)–(33)). The assertion projects the speaker's doxastic alternatives, which gives an epistemic component compatible with any degree of ignorance and with knowing that the whole domain qualifies, but not with knowing which proper part does (epistemic, Figs. 2–3, (29)). A non-volitional verb's event has no decision (nonvolitional, (34)), and an external argument merges above the VP abstraction, so the flavors available at a site follow from the binders that reach it (flavors_pattern, §3.4, fn. 17). Under an imperative the anchor can be the order's (harmonic, (82)–(85)).

Modal indefinites vary in the anchors they admit and in the bound on their witnesses (§6.2). Uno cualquiera admits only anchors with normative conditions, decisions and orders, as Alonso-Ovalle and Menéndez-Benito argue, so it has no epistemic reading but has the harmonic one under an imperative (cualquiera_selective, (67)–(68), (86), (93)); n'importe quel (120) and Italian un N qualsiasi (121) are as selective. Yalnhej's claim has no upper bound, where algún's excludes the whole domain and uno cualquiera's requires a unique witness (upperBound_universal, (122)–(127)). The readings the rows list follow from the denotations (reading_rows).

Implementation notes #

A world records which of two items the agent took, and a scenario fixes the worlds each event projects. (59)'s condition that the possible event be similar to the actual one (fn. 14) is left out: a possible world in the content of the anchor verifies the scope of a member.
A component has its anchor's flavor. A decision gives random choice, a circumstantial flavor; the assertion and the order give the primary flavors Hacquard assigns the declarative and imperative speech acts; a belief state gives an epistemic flavor.
The bounds of algún and uno cualquiera (p. 31), the first a quantity implicature (p. 32), are part of the assertion here.
The paper reports only unembedded readings of n'importe quel and un N qualsiasi, and §6.2 ascribes such selectivity to the anchors an item admits. The study gives both uno cualquiera's anchors; un N qualsiasi, the "potential Italian counterpart of uno cualquiera" (p. 32), also its unique witness, which Chierchia derives by scalar competition with the numeral.
The at-issue status of the components (survives rows, §§3.3, 6.1), the unremarkable readings and the predicative uses (§5) are row data: the study models neither embedding under negation nor predication.

TODO #

Under an overt possibility modal un N qualsiasi has an epistemic reading (Chierchia's (31a)), which uno cualquiera's anchors exclude ((93)); the scenario has no overt epistemic modal to state the contrast.
No source gives n'importe quel an upper bound or denies it one.
Fn. 18 ties the missing upper bound to yalnhej's number neutrality.

Alonso-Ovalle & Royer (2024): modal indefinites and semantic variation in Chuj #

Implementation notes #

TODO #

References #

The schema (59) #

Events and what they project #

Position and flavor (§3.4) #

Items (§§4, 6.2) #

The paper's judgments #