The (in)transparency of meaning change and variation

This book investigates the development of indefinites like cualquiera in European and Argentinian Spanish tracing their path from modal meanings like free choice and random selection to evaluative and even pejorative uses. Drawing on corpus data variation across dialects and formal semantic tools the study probes how transparent these shifts are and what they reveal about the mechanisms of meaning change. The findings will interest linguists working on indefinites variation or the interface between form and interpretation-whether in synchrony or diachrony.