The fall and rise of English any

‘The fall and rise of English any’, addresses the history of English any (<OE ænig) as one of functional continuity and stasis, were it not for the decline it underwent during the Early Middle English period (ca. 1050-1250), a fact that has often been neglected in the literature. Old English ænig and Modern English any share a number of similarities, therefore suggesting continuity, in terms of frequency, word-class, occurrence (in singular noun phrases and non-affirmative clauses), and meaning. Both carry the same semantic features of indefiniteness, individualization and non-exclusiveness, or uniqueness, which differentiate them from other determinatives such as one or a(n), although there are contexts in which they can be used interchangeably. Given their functional overlap, competition between any, one and a(n) was not unexpected, and it is precisely through the interaction between these three determinatives that the authors account for the rise and fall in the frequency of any during the Early Middle English period. The decline in the frequency of any coincides with a rise in the frequency of one/a(n); this latter fact may have actually caused the decrease in use of any. Both one and a(n) were variants of Old English án, whose core function was that of a numeral, but had others that resembled those of the indefinite article. Once one and a(n) started to be used in the same contexts as any, competition arose, and it was one/a(n) that took the lead. The progressive grammaticalization of Old English án might have put pressure on any, thus causing its decline in Early Middle English and contributing to its marginalization. The authors’ claim is that the fate of any can only be understood in the context of this grammaticalization and the emergence of the indefinite article a/an, which later became independent of the numeral. The fact that Old English án branched giving rise to both one and the new a(n), no longer serious competitors of any, meant that the latter re-established in usage and reassumed the frequency its ancestor had once Old English. In other words, the process of differentiation between the numeral and the indefinite article renewed the usefulness of any, which failed to disappear from the language. All this leads the authors to conclude that the history of any single item should not be studied in isolation, but as part of the language to which it belongs.