Friday, June 30, 2006
‘any’: problem with that
From Linguistics in the Netherlands (PDF):
There is no single Dutch morpheme which corresponds exactly to English any and the correct mapping from Dutch to English is a complicated many-to-many relation. Consider the representative examples in (24) through (36), which have been obtained from Dutch newspapers and books and native speaker informants (NSI).
(24) Zij die zaken doen met terroristen zullen geen zaken doen met de VS of enige andere
plaats waarop de VS greep hebben.
‘Whoever does business with terrorists will do no business with the US or with
any (*some) other place where the US has influence.’(25) 81 families die al enige dagen en nachten in de openlucht bivakkeerden…
‘81 families which already (had) camped in the open air for a few (*any) days
and nights…’(26) Ze zijn op geen enkel station uitgestapt. [NSI]
‘They didn’t get off at any (*some) station.’(27) Enkele honderden meters meer landinwaarts aan Pakistanse kant ligt…
‘A few (*any) hundred meters further inland on the Pakistani side lies…’.(28) *Heb je enkel idee? (cf.Heb je enig idee?) [NSI]
‘Do you have any idea?’(29) Niemand is ook maar ergens heen gegaan. [NSI]
‘Nobody has gone anywhere (*somewhere).’(30) *Ze hadden ook maar ergens kunnen uitstappen. [NSI]
‘They could have gotten off anywhere.’(31) Ze mogen op welk station dan ook uitstappen. [NSI]
‘They could have gotten off at any (*whatever) station.’(32) Welk bedrag u ook kunt missen, alles is welkom. [NSI]
‘Whatever (any) amout you can afford, that’s just fine.’(33) Van Osama bin Laden ontbreekt nog steeds elk spoor.
‘Still lacking is any (*every/*each) trace of Osama bin Laden.’(34) En ze nemen elk een kopje.
‘And they each (*any) took a cup.’(35) …dat de samoerai niet zouden aarzelen ‘kirisoete’ uit te oefenen—hun legale recht
iedere boer neer te sabelen en te doden….
‘that the samurai would not hesitate to exercise ‘kirisoete’—their legal right to
chop down and kill any (*every/*each) peasant…’(36) De dertig soldaten doorzochten ieder huis.
‘The thirty soldiers searched each (*any) house.’Faced with such a complex array of seemingly contradictory facts, it is difficult to
see how a general hypothesis testing procedure, whether conscious or unconscious,
could ever correctly discern what to transfer from Dutch as the meaning and
licensing conditions of any.