Free choice items as fossils ∗ Ana Aguilar Guevara 1 , Maria Aloni 2 , Angelika Port 2 , Katrin Schulz 2 , and Radek ˇ Sim´ık 3 1 Utrecht University 2 University of Amsterdam 3 University of Groningen Workshop on Indefiniteness Crosslinguistically (DGfS) Berlin – February 25/26, 2010 1 Introduction Goal: report on a cross-linguistic synchronic and diachronic corpus study on free choice and epistemic indefinites and the first attempt at an analysis. Starting point: Two observation from two different areas of linguistic theory: • Formal pragmatics: Use of expressions with existential meaning (e.g. plain indefinites like Dutch iemand or German jemand or Czech nˇekdo) can give rise to different pragmatic effects. Relevant here: – Free choice implicature : (1) a. You can invite somebody. b. Logical form: ✸∃x ∈ D : φ c. Free choice implicature: each individual is a permissible option – Ignorance implicature : (2) a. Somebody called. b. Logical form: ∃x ∈ D : φ c. Ignorance implicature: speaker doesn’t know who • Typology: Many languages have developed specialized forms for such meanings: – Free choice indefinites : Spanish cualquiera, Italian qualunque, Czech kter´ykoli, Hungarian ak´arki, ... – Epistemic indefinites : Russian to-series, Czech si-series, German, irgend-series, Spanish algun, ... • Main hypothesis: Different indefinite forms as fossilizations of different pragmatic effects. It may not be impossible for what starts life, so to speak, as a conversational implicature to become conventionalized. (Grice 1975:58) * agostana@gmail.com, m.d.aloni@uva.nl, a.port@uva.nl, k.schulz@uva.nl, r.simik@rug.nl 1