Why is it that any cannot be used as subject in negative sentences, while no can?
An example pair of sentences might be:
No children came.
Any children didn't come.
Please note that the following questions, which have been linked to this one as a basis for closing it, are spectacular in their inaptness:
First, the question is out of left field. The ungrammaticality of
doesn't have a thing to do with subjects. It has to do with how one uses the word any,
which is rather a complex subject.
There are at least two English words any:
Free-Choice any, as in Pick a number -- any number, or Anybody can do that.
Free-choice any can be a subject, but it usually occurs with a modal like can or able.
It's a special term with a special grammar and meaning, basically "Choose one".
Negative Polarity any. This is by far the most common use of any, and it (and all its compounds like anybody, anyone, anywhere, etc.) is a Negative Polarity Item. That means it can only be used grammatically inside the scope of a semantic negative trigger. These include negatives, questions, and a lot of idiomatic constructions.
Negative polarity items are determined by removing negative triggers and seeing whether the NPI is still grammatical. E.g, the boldface NPIs below:
Questions are negative environments, as it happens, so NPIs can occur there,
even as subjects.
So, since NPIs have to occur with negatives, the reason why *Any children didn't come is ungrammatical is because any isn't in the scope of a negative trigger. Not any children would be clunky but grammatical, though No children is better. There's also upstairs negation, as in
where the negative in the main clause licenses the any in the complement clause.
tl;dr -- If a sentence sounds odd, see if there's a negative in it, or whether adding negation makes it better.
