Any as a Finian Quantifier

We argue here that the two conflcting views on the semantic status of any, namely Kadmon and Landman's 1993 analysis, and veridicality-based approaches (Dayal 1995), can be reconciled by using the notion of non individiduation. Any essentially forbids semantic configurations in which the proposition it occurs in could be proved by an enumeration on individual cases. Therefore, it demands either that there be no individual events which could serve in a proof (hence its so-called neghative polarity), or that the domain of individuals be variable (hence its free-choiceness). We point out the strong similarity between this latter behaviour and the Finian theme of arbitrariness (Fine 1985, 1988, 1995).

L.M. Tovena and J. Jayez