Abstract

Across languages, we find indefinites that trigger modal inferences. One such indefinite is Spanish alg´un. The sentence in (1), for instance, makes an existential claim (that there is a student that Mar´ıa married), and additionally conveys that the speaker does not know which student satisfies this claim. Hence, adding the continuation namely Pedro, which explicitly identifies the student that Mar´ıa married, would result in oddity. In contrast, the counterpart of (1) with the ‘plain’ indefinite un allows for such a continuation, witness (2).