Abstract
The ellipsis of a VP whose antecedent contains an occurrence of so-called free choice any is highly constrained: it is acceptable only if the elided VP is appropriately embedded. We show that while this is unexpected on the common approaches to free choice and ellipsis, it is predicted on a theory of any that takes its domain to stand in a dependency relation with a c-commanding alternative-sensitive operator (cf. Lahiri 1998, Focus and negative polarity in Hindi. Natural Language Semantics 6(1). 57–123) and that takes free choice inferences to be generated by covert exhaustification in grammar (e.g., Fox 2007, Free choice and the theory of scalar implicatures. In Uli Sauerland & Penka Stateva (eds.), Presupposition and implicature in compositional semantics, 71–120. Palgrave Macmillan; Chierchia 2013, Logic in grammar. Oxford: Oxford University Press).
Acknowledgements
Special thanks to the reviewers for and the audiences at GLOW 38 (University of Paris 8) and SALT 25 (Stanford University), and the two reviewers for The Linguistic Review, for their input. Thanks also to Danny Fox, Yosef Grodzinsky, Kyle Johnson, and Marie-Christine Meyer for discussion, and Brian Buccola and Nofar Cohen for their written comments on the manuscript. This research has been supported by grants from Israel Science Foundation (1926/14), German-Israeli Foundation for Scientic Research and Development (2353), and Volkswagen Stiftung (VWZN3181).
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