Four questions about free-choiceness

Jacques Jayez (1) , Lucia Tovena (2)

1 ICAR - Interactions, Corpus, Apprentissages, Représentations
2 LLF UMR7110 - Laboratoire de Linguistique Formelle

This paper takes stock on four crucial issues concerning free choice items (FCIs). (1) Free choiceness is characterised via a minimal constraint enforcing equivalence along a dimension. (2) Widening offers an intuitively appealing way of describing the behaviour of FCIs, but is shown to be an effect rather than an explanation. (3) Tenets of the existential vs universal debate are recalled and argued to be non conclusive. (4) We explain why comparatives are (still) an unresolved puzzle

Domaines: Sciences cognitives

Jacques Jayez, Lucia Tovena. Four questions about free-choiceness . Langue française, 2010, pp.Issue : 166 Pages : 51+. ⟨hal-01110604⟩