General Noun Phrases

Abstract This chapter looks at ‘any’ as a quantifier. If noun phrases with ‘any’ are to be construed quantificationally, they must sometimes be represented by a universal quantifier, and sometimes by an existential. Earlier philosophers, notably Quine and Geach, hoped that the existentially representable cases might, when considerations of scope are taken into account, prove to be universal after all. Nevertheless, there are ineluctably ‘existential’ uses. In addition, if there are cases that must be represented existentially, then it is useless to insist that all those cases that can be represented universally must be, even those for which a short-scope existential representation is available. However, the larger conclusion is that we should question the view that ‘any’ is essentially a quantifier in anything like the first-order logical understanding of that notion.