On the Universal Construal of Mandarin any

Abstract

Mandarin polarity-sensitive item rènhé, just like English any, is ungrammatical under a necessity modal; nevertheless, this may be ameliorated by the presence of the quantificational adverb dou, with the rènhé-DP carrying a universal construal. Crucially, the presence of dou alone is not sufficient to render rènhé grammatical. We suggest that the distribution of Mandarin rènhé in a modal environment is best captured by the two-layered approach by Crniˇc (2019a,b, 2022), according to which i) the license of any is subject to Strawson downward entailment, and ii) exhaustification merely plays a supplementary role by creating an environment hospitable to any. Along with these lines, we suggest that because of the universal force dou introduces, the scope of a necessity modal may be turned SDE and hence rènhé may be rescued in this environment.