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Journal of Semantics Advance Access originally published online on April 4, 2006
Journal of Semantics 2006 23(2):135-183; doi:10.1093/jos/ffl001
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© The Author 2006. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

(In)Definiteness, Polarity, and the Role of wh-morphology in Free Choice

Anastasia Giannakidou

University of Chicago

Lisa Lai-Shen Cheng

Leiden University

Correspondence: ANASTASIA GIANNAKIDOU, Department of Linguistics, University of Chicago, 1010 E. 59th Street, Chicago, IL 60637, USA. giannaki{at}uchicago.edu

Correspondence: LISA L.-S. CHENG, Department of Linguistics/TW, Leiden University, P.O. Box 9515 2300 RA, Leiden, The Netherlands. LL.Cheng{at}let.leidenuniv.nl

In this paper we reconsider the issue of free choice and the role of the wh-morphology employed in it. We show that the property of being an interrogative wh-word alone is not sufficient for free choice, and that semantic and sometimes even morphological definiteness is a pre-requisite for some free choice items (FCIs) in certain languages, e.g. in Greek and Mandarin Chinese. We propose a theory that explains the polarity behaviour of FCIs cross-linguistically, and allows indefinite (Giannakidou 2001) as well as definite-like FCIs. The difference is manifested as a lexical distinction in English between any (indefinite) and wh-ever (definite); in Greek it appears as a choice between a FCI nominal modifier (taking an NP argument), which illustrates the indefinite option, and a FC free relative illustrating the definite one. We provide a compositional analysis of Greek FCIs in both incarnations, and derive in a parallel manner the Chinese FCIs. Here the definite versus indefinite alternation is manifested in the presence or absence of dou, which we take to express the maximality operator. It is thus shown that what we see in the morphology of FCIs in Greek is reflected in syntax in Chinese.

Our analysis has important consequences for the class of so-called wh-indeterminates. In the context of current proposals, free choiceness is taken to come routinely from interrogative semantics, and wh-indeterminates are treated as question words which can freely become FCIs (Kratzer and Shimoyama 2002). Our results from Mandarin and Greek emphasize that wh-indeterminates do not form a uniform class in this respect, and that interrogative semantics alone cannot predict either sensitivity of free choice to definiteness, or the polarity behaviour of FCIs.


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