English Language & Usage Asked by Setayesh on July 21, 2021
I was reading these questions and I noticed that in one of them, "any" is used with a singular countable noun. And in the other one "any" is used with a plural countable noun.
I wanted to know why that is ?
It depends which kind of any you are talking about.
The more common any is a negative polarity equivalent of some. Like some, it is used with a plural or an uncountable:
I have some books, some wine.
Do you have any books, any wine?
But we would not normally say
? I have some book.
or
? Do you have any book?
But there is a second use of any which is not a negative polarity item, and is used with countables, singular or plural; it means something like I don't care which.
You can choose any book / any books.
If you use it with an uncountable, it will be like using "a" with the uncountable, and designate a kind or sort:
You can choose any wine.
means "any kind of wine".
Answered by Colin Fine on July 21, 2021
From § 2.54, CoGEL, "any", as a determiner, is used in the so-called non-assertive grammatical contexts. It can be found at § 5.14, Type (b) (ii) that it is the non-assertive central determiner of plural count nouns and noncount nouns (of a type called called quantifiers, § 5.23). Therefore, it is not considered acceptable to use it with singular count nouns. The meaning of any in this case is the counterpart of "some" (unstressed "some", which should be /səm/. In this context "any" is not stressed either.
Count
Noncount
However, from § 6.61 we see that "any" occurs with a different meaning in assertive territory. This meaning is "it doesn't matter which/what/who". While the word is still a determiner, it is not now a quantifier and it is stressed.
Examples from CoGEL
This does not mean that it does not occur with this meaning in non-assertive territory.
This is the explanation for the occurrence of both plural and singular.
Answered by LPH on July 21, 2021
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