The Grammar of Choice

This dissertation investigates the semantics of universal Free Choice (FC) items i.e., items like FC 'any' or Spanish 'cualquiera'. This study is relevant for the theory of quantification. One of the core questions of this research is: what is the range of quantificational constructions used in natural language? Investigating the behavior of FC items will be instrumental in answering this question. While FC items seem to express quantification, they do not behave like 'textbook' quantifiers: They have a restricted distribution, and they seem to have a special relationship with modality.