On singular existential quantifiers in Italian

The paper discusses the paradigm of singular quantifiers in Italian (qualche, ogni, qualsiasi, etc.), focusing on the syntactic and semantic properties of the existential qualche. In different domains, qualcheseemstocorrespondtotheEnglishafew,oneormore,someorother.Theanalysistriestoderive the polisemy of this expression from two distinct positions of interpretation, a basic logical meaning and the effect of pragmatic scales. Qualche is then contrasted with English some, Spanish algun and Italian qualsiasi. In the second part of the article the theory is tested against the scope possibilities of qualche, and the quantificational status of this indefinite is evaluated. CONCLUSIONS The analysis presented in this paper has largely been an exercise in (and hopefully, an exploration of) the syntax–pragmatics interface. I have proposed that the com- plex behavior of the Italian determiner qualche and its variants follows from the two positions in which this expression can be interpreted, and from the interplay between a logical meaning (which may or may not be part of the lexical specifi- cation of the determiner itself) and a pragmatic meaning, computed by comparing qualche with the pragmatic meanings of other determiners in the same Horn scale. Morphological markedness plays a role in determining the position in the scale, and the final pragmatic meaning. Thesingular,‘indeterminate’interpretationforqualcheandunqualchehasbeen attributed to a low LF position which ‘bleeds’ contextual restrictions, obtaining the so-called domain-widening effect. The fact that this meaning is available only in certain intensional contexts can provide an explanation for the complex behavior of qualche under negation. If the proposal is on the right track, specifying mul- tiple qualche (or multiple meanings of qualche) in the lexicon becomes largely unnecessary.