indefinite pronoun

This chapter examines indefinite pronouns like 'somebody' and 'something' and distinguishes two major types. On the one hand, they may be closely related to the interrogative pronouns 'who' and 'what', as in Russian , where kto-to 'somebody' and čto-to 'something' are derived from kto 'who' and čto 'what' by means of the indefinite suffix -to . On the other hand, they may be closely related to the generic nouns 'person' and 'thing', as in Persian , where 'somebody' is expressed as kæs-i [person-indef] and 'something' is expressed as čiz-i [thing-indef]. In addition to the two major types, there are some languages with special expressions for 'somebody' and 'something', unrelated to anything else. An example is Abkhaz (Northwest Caucasian ), where 'somebody' is aj˚ə̀ and 'something' is ak'ə̀ (Hewitt 1979 : 158). Theoretically one might expect further types, e.g. indefinites derived from demonstrative pronouns, but no other types have been found. Finally, languages may lack nominal indefinite pronouns entirely and express the equivalent of ‘someone’ and ‘something’ by means of an existential construction . Thus, Map 46A shows five different values (see Haspelmath 1997 : 242-243 for an earlier version of this map). In addition to the nominal indefinites 'somebody' and 'something', languages usually also have adverbial and adjectival indefinite expressions ('somewhere', 'somehow', 'for some reason', 'of some kind') and occasionally we even find verbal indefinites ('do something'). Typically, these behave in the same way as the nominal indefinites. Thus, in Nivkh (Russian Far East), indefinites of all kinds are derived from interrogatives, and in French , indefinites of most kinds are derived from generic nouns. Since many descriptions do not provide information on adverbial indefinites, this chapter is restricted to the nominal indefinites 'somebody' and 'something'. In other languages, indefinite and interrogative pronouns are identical. This possibility exists in some Slavic and Germanic languages (e.g. colloquial German Ist da wer? [is there who] 'Is there somebody there?'), and it is particularly widespreead in Australian languages, e.g. Jaminjung (Jaminjungan ; Northern Territory, Australia ) nanggayin 'who; somebody' (Schultze-Berndt 2000 : 45). It has been suggested that in these languages, indefinites and interrogatives are really identical and have the general meaning of "lack of information"; the specific interpretations as indefinite and interrogative arise from the larger construction or from the context (see Bhat 2000 , 2004 , as well as Mushin 1995 for Australian languages). If this is correct, these indefinites are not synchronically "interrogative-based", but it appears that at least diachronically, the interrogative use is always primary (Haspelmath 1997 : 176). A few languages clearly have dedicated indefinite pronouns which are based on the generic nouns 'person' and 'thing'. Instead of the noun 'person', some languages make use of the numeral 'one', and not uncommonly, these are accompanied by an indefinite determiner of some kind. A case in point is Italian , which has qualc-uno 'somebody' and qual-cosa 'something' (from qualche 'some' plus uno 'one' or cosa 'thing'), and English is similar (some-one/some-body, some-thing) , although the noun body does not have the meaning 'person' anymore when it is used by itself. For these languages, we have to say that there are dedicated indefinite pronouns, because not all properties of the indefinites are predictable from their parts and general rules (for instance the fact that something is stressed on the first syllable, as opposed to some thing ). But for most languages with generic-noun-based indefinites, there is no good evidence available that these expressions are different from ordinary indefinite noun phrases. In fact, some descriptions explicitly deny that they are indefinite pronouns. For Kobon (Trans-New Guinea ), Davies (1981b : 156) says: "There are