Publication details

Czech indefinites kdokoliv and cokoliv: Semantic analysis of licensing contexts

Authors

STRACHOŇOVÁ Hana

Year of publication 2013
Type Appeared in Conference without Proceedings
MU Faculty or unit

Faculty of Arts

Citation
Description Czech lexems containing the -koliv morpheme (kdokoliv 'anyone', cokoliv 'anything', kterýkoliv 'any', kdekoliv 'anywhere', etc.) are traditionally treated as indefinites (i.e. Komárek, 1986). We can find more o less the same semantic characteristic of them throughout the Czech literature: these items contain the semantic feature of generality (Kopečný, 1980) or generalization, reinforcement (Rejzek, 2001), arbitrariness, indifference and irrelevance (Komárek, 1980). But we are not aware of a study that would deal with the fact that the expressions with this specific morphology are excluded for instance from simple episodic past statements, see (1); in contrast with modal statements, see (2), imperatives, see (3), or future statements, see (4). (1) #Adam koupil jakékoliv víno. Adam buy: 3 sg, Past any wine: Acc (2) Adam mohl koupit jakékoliv víno. Adam can: 3 sg, Past buy: inf any wine: Acc 'Adam could buy any wine.' (3) Adame, kup jakékoliv víno! Adam: Voc buy: Imper, sg. any wine 'Adam, buy any wine!' (4) Zítra Adam koupí jakékoliv víno a vyrazíme k tobě. tomorrow Adam buy: 3 sg, Fut any wine and go: 1 pl, Fut to you: Dat 'Adam will buy any wine tomorrow and then we will go to your place.' Non-Czech linguistic literature usually treats this type of items as so-called free choice items (FCI): expressions that are semantically sensitive to the polarity of the statement. Giannakidou (2011) examined the distribution of equivalent expressions cross-linguistically and defined the licensing semantic context as non-veridical environment, for both FCIs and NPIs. Veridicality is then defined as a property of the function that operates on the denotation of embedded sentence. A veridical function expresses a commitment of the speaker to the truth of the embedded sentence; see the main clause in (5). Non-veridical function doesn't express that commitment.

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