A note on any and simplification [slides]

Vincent Rouillard (MIT)

In von Fintel (1999), the author uses the acceptability of any in the antecedent of conditionals to argue in favor of (i) an alternative to the Stalnaker-Lewis semantics for conditionals (cf. von Fintel 2001) and (ii) a licensing condition for NPIs formulated in terms of Strawson downward entailment. I review the argument and show that simplification inferences drawn from indefinites in the antecedent of conditionals appear to defuse it. Drawing on recent work by Crnič (2022), I show that the argument preserves its bite once we take into consideration sentences where the restrictor of any is a plural NP.