Whatever floats your boat

Abstract

The meaning of indefinites of the wh-ever paradigm has been the object of a number of claims regarding its ignorance and indifference readings. These are examined here in the light of a systematic analysis of 2500 occurrences of the wh-ever paradigm in the Brigham-Young-University TV-corpus. Contrary to general assumptions, ignorance and indifference readings are not separate, as they are found jointly in 27 % of occurrences. Each reading is sensitive to contextual cues: ignorance associates with animacy, and is compatible with plural nouns; indifference associates with independent use, subtrigging by modals and singular nouns. Finally, scalarity is not a dominant dimension of the wh-items’ interpretation, being associated with subtrigging by modal expressions and focus stress, and requiring an indifference reading. These items are defined as evoking an unidentified referent requiring identification belonging to an open-ended series of possibilities.