Choose between metaphysical and epistemic alternatives

This paper proposes a new way of analyzing a special kind of item, called Free Choice Items (FCIs). As the name reveals, these items express freedom of choice and are therefore grammatical in contexts which express variation among alternatives, such as in imperatives: pick any card (Vendler 1967). Untill now, attention has been mostly given to the licensing conditions of these items and scholars have claimed that FCIs are grammatical in all contexts that presuppose alternatives. In this paper, based on novel English and Greek data, I argue that focus should also be given to the nature of the alternatives that FCIs denote. I pursue the hypothesis that FCIs are divided into two subclasses: FCIs that denote epistemic alternatives and FCIs that denote metaphysical alternatives.