Thoughts on "any"

[Chris Bogart <cbogart@QUETZAL.COM>]

There's something special about the arguments of djica, nitcu, claxu, sisku,
and certain commands (ko cpacu lo tanxe), that is akin to a negative.  There
seems to be a negation associated with most of these concepts (mi nitcu lo
tanxe at least suggests that mi na ponse lo tanxe; ko cpacu lo tanxe is the
same way)

I think the transparency/opacity distinction paralells the two possible
orderings of the negation and the existence assertion.  In the following
examples I've changed the ordering in the "need" sentences as well, which
seems significant since I claim "nitce" is "sorta negative".  But obviously
there's a problem with making the order of a certain small set of gismu
(djica, nitce, claxu, sisku, etc.) significant...

[I use xe'e to flag the opaque case, and xa'a to flag the transparent case,
but if you allow for a moment that argument order matters with nitcu, the
flags are unnecessary]

OPAQUE:
        mi nitcu [xe'e] lo tanxe
                I need a box (box describes my need, not any particular box)
SUGGESTS:
        mi na ponse da poi lo tanxe
                It is not true that (there exists a box such that I have it)
                I don't have any boxes at all


BUT TRANSPARENT:
        [xa'a] lo tanxe se nitcu mi
                There is a box I need (I have a relationship of "need"
                        with some box)
SUGGESTS:
        da poi lo tanxe na se ponse mi
                There exists a box such that (I don't have it)
                There is a box I don't have

In other words, the two possible interpretations caused by the combination
of the claim of existence ("da poi tanxe") and the negation ("na") in "mi na
ponse da poi lo tanxe", are disambiguated by word order, either in the main
sentence or out in the prenex.  But I think there is something parallel
going on with "nitcu" and "claxu" as well, but we don't have a way of
disambiguating it, since they aren't explicitly negative.  But something
like negation is going on, I think.

I don't know what suggestion to make based on that observation, but
hopefully someone else here will see something useful in it...
 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
 Chris Bogart
 cbogart@quetzal.com
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