Modal selectivity in the nominal domain: Spanish uno cualquiera

Abstract

Modal indefinites are existential determiners that trigger modal inferences. Some of them, which we can call ‘random choice indefinites’, indicate that an agent made an indiscriminate choice (Choi 2007, Choi & Romero 2008, Rivero 2011a,b, Alonso-Ovalle & Menéndez- Benito 2011, 2013, a.o.). Spanish “uno cualquiera” belongs to this class. The sentence “Juan cogió una carta cualquiera” (‘Juan picked a random card’) conveys that Juan picked a card and that he chose it indiscriminately — he could have picked any other card. The random choice interpretation can be embedded under modals: the sentence “Juan tiene que haber ido a ver una película cualquiera” (‘Juan must have gone to see a random movie’) can convey that Juan must have gone to see a movie that he picked randomly. Under some modals, another possibility arises: a harmonic reading, on which “uno cualquiera” introduces a distribution effect with respect to the worlds that the modal ranges over. For instance, “¡Coge una carta cualquiera!” (‘take any random card!’) can be interpreted as conveying that any card is a permitted option. However, this harmonic interpretation is not available with all kinds of modals (modal selectivity). This paper aims to derive the modal interaction pattern displayed by “uno cualquiera”. Recent research on verbal modality (e.g., Hacquard 2006, Kratzer 2009) argues that modal domains are anchored to parts of the evaluation world (situations, events, individuals), rather than to whole worlds. Following Alonso-Ovalle & Menéndez-Benito 2013, we assume that the random choice component of “uno cualquiera” projects a modal domain from the decision taken by the agent. This interpretation is derived by positing that “uno cualquiera” is a nominal quantifier anchored to an event argument. On this proposal, we expect different interpretations (random choice vs. harmonic) depending on what event “uno cualquiera” takes as anchor. When the anchor is the event argument of the verb, we will get the random choice interpretation. When “uno cualquiera” shares its anchor with that of a higher modal, we will get the harmonic interpretation. This hypothesis gives us a way to address modal selectivity: we contend that “uno cualquiera” requires anchors of a particular type, and harmonic interpretations are only possible when the anchor of the modal satisfies this requirement.