Re: 'any' as discursive

["John E. Clifford" <pcliffje@CRL.COM>]

        Veion suggests that 'any', when not all in disguise, is a
discursive that means "no hidden conditions apply".  His example, "I will
eat any apple," however, seems to fail on both counts.
        First, the sentence as he uses it is pretty clearly not a
prediction, but an offer.  As such, it sets up an intentional (so also
intensional and thus opaque) context.  "Any' then functions as usual as a
context-leaping universal, the whole being approximately, "for all x, if
x is an apple, then I am willing that I eat x" -- "all" in disguise
again, but outside the opaque context and binding into it, so covering
real apples only (with no guarantee that here are any, as is usual with
'any').
        Using the often illuminating dialog exposition of quantifiers,
this offer would amount to the speaker saying "You get to pick the apple
but I am willing to eat whatever you pick."  But I, the hearer am pretty
clearly not unrestricted in my choice of apples.  In the first place, I
only get one pick (well, certainly the speaker can withdraw his offer
after some number, he is not committed to eating -- or even to being
willing to eat -- every apple there is).  This is a feature of the
intentional part, though, not of the 'any.'  But, further, my choice is
restricted in very inexplicit ways: I surely cannot expect him to take
the apple the queen has prepared for Snow white nor the one Eve gave
Adam nor probably even those soft brown ones in the bottom of the
barrel.  "Any' is, after all, just the preferred bearer of such
conditions as "within reason"  (the usual formulation of the hidden
clause). To insist that the speaker has agreed to eat a manifestly yucky
apple is on a par to denying that all wild ducks in North America fly
South for the winter because pet ducks, crippled ducks and ducks in city
parks do not.  The objections may be technically correct but
conversationally irrelevant and inappropriate -- moderately good logic
but abominable language.
        Veion's idea is a good one, IF he can find a case.  But IMHO
'any' ain't gonna provide any.
pc>|83