Hebrew negative polarity Items – šum and af

In this paper I am going to examine two negative polarity determiners in Hebrew um and af which are analogous to English any. I show that though, like any, they are licensed in negative environments but not in affirmative ones, they have distributional properties which distinguish them from any. I then explore the semantics of um and af and show that they are not synonymous; they are sensitive to semantic distinctions between different denotations of nouns individuals, sums, quantities and kinds. I argue that um and af are wideners licensed by strengthening as Kadmon & Landman (1993) argue any is. However, the widening involved is not contextual but one which is sensitive to the available denotations for nouns.