Free choice indefinites and serial universality effects

• Main Author: Mara Panaitescu
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Editura Universitatii din Bucuresti 2014-05-01
• Series: Bucharest Working Papers in Linguistics
• Subjects: serial universality; metaphysical modal base; branching world; non-settledness; domain shift
• Online Access: http://bwpl.unibuc.ro/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/BWPL_2014_nr.1_PANAITESCU.pdf

The paper focuses on two contexts which license universal free choice items: future sentences and episodic subtrigged sentences, where the universal flavor of free choice items is dependent on temporal structure. Generally, the universal flavor of free choice items is an outcome of the constraints they impose on the interpretation of individual alternatives. The aim is to show that the two environments produce a serial universality effect (in the sense of chronological order): the free choice item is constrained to vary with respect to the values for the variable ranging over entities and with respect to an event variable. The alternatives are distributed in the time-world segments of a branching W´ T framework. The non-specificity of the free choice interpretation amounts to domain shift, which, in its turn, is guaranteed by non-settledness within a metaphysical modal base.