@article{Indiscriminatives:2598,
      recid = {2598},
      author = {Cisneros, Carlos Javier},
      title = {Free Choice from Indiscriminacy: A Study of Free Choice  Indefinites and Indiscriminatives in English and Cuevas  Mixtec},
      publisher = {University of Chicago},
      school = {Ph.D.},
      address = {2020-08},
      pages = {225},
      abstract = {This dissertation concerns the semantics of free choice  indefinites, indiscriminatives (Horn, 2000), and the  derivational relationship between these two indefinite  classes across languages.  It defines indiscriminatives as  indefinites that occur under negation to express the  specificity or noteworthiness of a yet to be revealed  candidate for satisfaction of a predicate.  They include  English indefinites of the 'just any' paradigm, as well as  its translations across languages.

The dissertation  refutes the prevailing attitude in the literature that  indiscriminatives are pragmatic enrichments on free choice  indefinites that are unessential to understanding free  choice phenomena, and it proposes a novel semantics that  predicts that free choice indefinites are actually  frequently derived from indiscriminatives.  Two case  studies are considered: English indiscriminative 'just any'  and bare 'any', as well as indiscriminatives in Cuevas  Mixtec, an Otomanguean language of southern Mexico.  In  both languages, indiscriminatives may have free choice  readings, and in Cuevas Mixtec, an optional focus particle  'va' must be attached

to the indiscriminative to derive a  free choice indefinite.  The proposal accommodates this  data first by developing a novel analysis of free choice  meaning, then by building a general semantics of  indiscriminatives that may be modified to derive free  choice indefinites.

The proposal breaks down the meaning  components of free choice indefinites and indiscriminatives  into four semantic ingredients: existential quantification,  the activation of subdomain alternatives, exclusive  meaning, and an inferential operation called minimal  sufficiency evaluation.  Existential quantification and  subdomain alternatives are involved in the semantic  composition of both types of indefinite, and they are  exploited in deriving polarity sensitive behavior more  broadly by means of inferential conflicts between an  assertion and its propositional alternatives (Krifka,  1995).  For example, English indefinites of the 'any'  paradigm are analyzed as existential quantifiers with a  presupposition that some propositional alternative to their  assertion, with a strictly more specific nominal  restriction, is true.  This results in an assertion that is  inferentially weaker than the presupposition in upward  entailing environments, and a felicitously stronger  assertion in environments that reverse inferential strength  relationships.

Indiscriminatives additionally feature an  explicit or implicit exclusive meaning component, modeled  as the 'only' operator defined by Coppock & Beaver (2014).   This operator applies an exhaustified interpretation on the  assertion relative to propositional alternatives, and when  negated, it forms an assertion that matches the  presupposition in strength.  Free choice indefinites  instead feature minimal sufficiency evaluation, an  operation that associates individuals with degrees on a  relevant scale and imposes a dependency on exceeding some  minimum degree suficient for satisfaction of a predicate.   The operation reverses the inferential strength  relationships between scalar terms in semantic environments  with modal expressions, satisfying 'any''s need for a  stronger assertion for felicity.

These four semantic  ingredients may be reorganized with respect to each other  in order to account for distributional differences between  polarity sensitive indefinites across languages.  Most  crucially, indefinites with both indiscriminative and free  choice readings organize the ingredients so that the 'only'  operator is interpreted with narrow scope with respect to  minimal sufficiency evaluation, explaining the derivation  of free choice indefinites from indiscriminatives.},
      url = {http://knowledge.uchicago.edu/record/2598},
      doi = {https://doi.org/10.6082/uchicago.2598},
}