Indefinite Pronouns Research Articles

Pragmatic functions of versatile unsa ‘what’ in Cebuano: From interrogative pronoun to placeholder to stance marker

This study examines the referential and nonreferential uses of unsa ‘what’ expressions in Cebuano, including accompanying enclitics, if any, the kind of context or situation in which the expression is uttered, and whether the ‘what’ expression is part of the uttered statement or syntactically disjunct from the rest of the utterance, as well as the pathways in which these expressions have extended their use and meaning. The data used in this study consisted of five approximately thirty-minute long casual conversations between friends. The data show that the ‘what’-word unsa is used not only as an interrogative pronoun to seek information but also as an indefinite pronoun; it has also evolved into a placeholder, an idiomatic expression, and a discourse marker. In terms of form, they may be nominal (or part of a noun phrase), verbal (or part of the predicate), or disjunctive (i.e., independent from the main clause). More than half of the time (55%), unsa does not occur with any aspectual or modal particle, while almost two-fifths of unsa tokens (39%) are realized with the mitigating enclitic = man to tone down the force of a question. Similar to Lee et al. (2017), there is a tendency for these ‘what’-expressions to express the speaker's negative stance, especially in the rhetorical idiomatic unsa phrases. In this paper, specific morphosyntactic environments have been identified in relation to the epistemic and (dis)affiliative speaker stance uses of unsa.

Semantics of negative pronouns in the light of compatibility with the modifier "almost"

This article is devoted to the analysis of the semantics of negative pronouns in the Russian language. At the moment, there are two main approaches to this issue. In the first approach, negative pronouns are considered synonyms of the indefinite pronouns 'someone', 'someone' or 'someone', used only in negative contexts (i.e., no one came = it is not true that someone came). The second approach treats them as synonymous with the quantifier 'everyone' (for example, no one came = everyone (person) didn't come). The article discusses the arguments in favor of the second version of the analysis, based on the permissibility of combining negative pronouns with the modifier 'almost' (as, for example, in the sentence 'almost no one came'). The relevance of the study is due to the lack of consensus on the correct version of the analysis of the semantics of negative pronouns. The scientific novelty of the study consists in the fact that it presents new arguments showing that the permissibility of combinations of the type 'almost nobody' presents a problem for the analysis of negative pronouns as indefinite. Firstly, this analysis cannot simultaneously explain the permissibility of combinations like 'almost no one' and the inadmissibility of combinations like 'almost someone', 'almost anyone' and 'almost anyone'. Secondly, it is shown that this analysis requires considering 'almost' as an operator having a scope over the entire proposition, and not a separate component. However, such an analysis of the modifier 'almost' leads to the prediction of non-existent interpretations in negative sentences with numerals like 'Peter has not solved almost ten problems'. Thus, it is shown that negative pronouns are synonymous with universal quantifiers of the type 'each', and not indefinite pronouns.

Pronouns functioning as direct objects in the speech of Russian-language children

The study is devoted to Russian pronouns which children use in grammatical position of a direct object. The aim of the research is to consider the distinctive features of the pronouns belonging to different semantic groups. Additionally, the paper is an effort to answer the question if the connection between the position of the object in the sentence and the semantics of the pronoun is relevant when mastering the language, i.e. to discover pronouns of what classes are more likely to be associated with the object syntactic function in children’s speech. Corpus recordings of children’s speech, namely the data from longitudinal observations of children’s speech, comprise the material of the study. The basic research method employed is the functional-semantic analysis of utterances. As a result of the performed study, it was found that direct objects denoted by pronouns in the accusative case appear in most children’s speech in the third year of life. As for the frequency of occurrence of accusative case forms in a child’s speech, pronoun classes differ from one another; this is partly caused by their semantics. There is a clear distinction between deictic pronouns and quantifiers: children use the latter (negative, indefinite, universal) more often in the object position. Four semantic characteristics are associated with the frequency of occurrence of object forms. The first one is inanimateness: inanimate pronouns and pronouns referring to inanimate referents take the object position more often than animate pronouns. The next characteristic is anaphoricity or the anaphoric nature of pronouns: pronouns referring to another word in a child’s speech are more often in the accusative case than other pronouns. The non-concreteness or lack of reference to a concrete referent which is directly observable in the communication situation also influences the frequency of occurrence: indefinite and negative pronouns turn out to be the most "objective" for children. Finally, another characteristic is generalisation, or a reference to a group of referents: the pronoun vsyo (all, everything) occupies a prominent position on the "object" scale. The influence of semantic factors is not noted when using adjective pronouns incorporated into nominal groups dependent on nouns in the accusative case and also when using non-canonical objects (the adverbs kak (how), tak (so) and subordinate complement clauses (sentential actants) with relative pronouns.

Negotiating mental illness across the lay-professional divide: Role play in peer work consultations.

Patient involvement is a prominent policy aim in modern health care. Today, mental health services employ peer workers (PWs) who have personal experiences with mental illness. Based on 22 interviews with PWs and 26 audio recordings of real‐life consultations, we show how PWs talk about their personal experiences as professional qualifications. Furthermore, we demonstrate how in real‐life encounters, PWs and patients convert personal experiences into a professional approach through an interactionist role play that balance PWs role as former patients and current professionals. Our analysis shows that PWs combine the personal pronoun ‘I’ (stressing that it is personal) with the indefinite pronoun ‘one’ (referring to generalised patient experiences) when they recount illness experiences. This convey that PWs engage with mental illness as both a personal and professional topic. In addition, the analysis shows that PWs (and patients) use professional clues to manifest PWs’ positions as professionals. Overall, the article demonstrates that instead of focussing on authentic patient relationships, as previous research has done, it is beneficial to investigate peer work from a symbolic interactionist approach revealing how PWs and patients skilfully manoeuvre the contradictions embedded in the PWs’ dual role as former patients and current professionals.

(Negative) Polarity Items in Catalan and Other Trans-Pyrenean Romance Languages

This paper identifies the set of properties that polarity items (PI), negative polarity items (NPI) and negative concord items (NCI) satisfy in Catalan, Aragonese, Benasquese and Occitan. It shows that in Catalan, gaire ‘much, many’ is a PI, pas ‘at all’ is an NPI with enriched meanings and indefinites such as ningú ‘anybody, n-body’ come in two sets, as both PIs and NCIs. It further shows that in the trans-Pyrenean Romance varieties studied here, a distinction must be made between indefinite pronouns such as dengún ‘anyone, n-one’ and scalar minimizers such as gota (lit. drop), which come in parallel PI and NCI sets, whereas NPIs such as brenca (lit. crumb) have developed an enriched meaning. This paper reveals the different status of pas across Catalan and other trans-Pyrenean Romance varieties either as an NPI at stage II of Jespersen’s cycle, which further constrains conventional implicatures, or as a negative operator.

Impersonal Verbal Constructions in Biblical Hebrew: Active, Stative, and Passive

In this paper I focus on the syntactic properties of subjects in impersonal verbal constructions in Biblical Hebrew. It is claimed that four types of subjectless verbal clauses—active finite and participial plural, active finite singular, passive, and stative—feature three types of impersonal subject: covert indefinite pronoun, inflectional morpheme, and zero-subject. It will be demonstrated that these subjects have different, only partly overlapping syntactic properties: The covert indefinite pronoun implies an animate subject that does not necessitate “collective interpretation” and can have generic scope; the subject can be topicalised, negated, and relativised, the verbal predicate is temporally vague. The 3rd masculine plural inflectional morpheme implies an animate collective subject; it can be controlled from the matrix clause and be used for participant tracking and anaphora; the verbal predicate is quite precisely anchored in time. The dummy zero-subject has no explicit subject properties; it can be theorised that the syntactic slot of a subject is taken by an overt cognate argument (Cause or Theme) of stative or passive verbs, but practically such a subject leaves no syntactic traces.

USE OF STYLISTIC MEANS OF COMIC CATEGORY AT THE LEXICO-SEMANTIC LEVEL: FIGURES OF QUANTITY

The article deals with the study of linguo-stylistic means of the comic category representation at the lexico-semantic level. Modern English prose is characterized by a specific comic modality, which is a characteristic feature of the author’s individual style. The leading means of the lexico-semantic level, that contribute to the realization of the comic effect in belles-letters texts, have been analyzed. The material of research is the English-language prose works of small forms by the most prominent writers, such as: K. Barry, K. Vonnegut, R. Carver and R. Dahl. The aforementioned authors use hyperbolization, which is introduced by means of similes, indefinite pronouns, nouns formed from numerals (in the process of numeralization), temporal and spatial adverbs, a set of lexical units with negative colouring, adjectives in the superlative degree of comparison, modal verbs in the negative form, emphatic constructions.

RENDERING ENGLISH FICTION INDEFINITE PRONOUNS INTO UKRAINIAN: A CORPUS APPROACH

The paper deals with an investigation into the usage of English indefinite nominal pronouns in modern fictional discourse and the specificity of their rendering into Ukrainian with employment of corpus approach. The pronouns under study have been selected by the entire sampling method from the complete register compiled on the basis of the novel by J.K. Rowling “Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban” and its Ukrainian version translated by V. Morozov. There have been determined the semantic structures of nine English indefinite pronouns based on their formal characteristics and the dictionary entries’ analysis. The units under analysis have been divided into three structural-semantic types according to their form and meaning, wherein two semantic subtypes have been distinguished. The lexemes of each of type have been distributed in decreasing sequence on a zero-ten frequency scale. There have been calculated the expected frequencies per 1,000 words for each of the types to suggest the probability of their usage in a text. The most frequent and the least frequent indefinite pronouns and pronoun types have been revealed, as well as the lexemes possessing medium frequencies. It has been identified that pronouns with 'some' are of highest frequency when pronouns with 'ever’ – the lowest, and pronouns with 'any’ are in between. The most frequent is the pronoun ‘something’, the least frequent is the pronoun ‘whoever’. Pronouns ‘anyone’ and ‘someone’ have demonstrated the average frequency in the microcorpus under analysis. With the use of the immediate constituents’ analysis and contextual analysis there have been revealed the peculiarities of the pronouns’ usage in the source text. Based on the transformational analysis there have been specified the translation methods and types of translation shifts employed for adequate rendering of the pronouns into Ukrainian. The most common methods of the analysed pronouns’ translation have been proved to be equivalent translation, omission, addition, lexical and lexico-grammatical replacements, with additions and grammatical shifts.

RENDERING ENGLISH FICTION INDEFINITE PRONOUNS INTO UKRAINIAN: A CORPUS APPROACH

The paper deals with an investigation into the usage of English indefinite nominal pronouns in modern fictional discourse and the specificity of their rendering into Ukrainian with employment of corpus approach. The pronouns under study have been selected by the entire sampling method from the complete register compiled on the basis of the novel by J.K. Rowling “Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban” and its Ukrainian version translated by V. Morozov. There have been determined the semantic structures of nine English indefinite pronouns based on their formal characteristics and the dictionary entries’ analysis. The units under analysis have been divided into three structural-semantic types according to their form and meaning, wherein two semantic subtypes have been distinguished. The lexemes of each of type have been distributed in decreasing sequence on a zero-ten frequency scale. There have been calculated the expected frequencies per 1,000 words for each of the types to suggest the probability of their usage in a text. The most frequent and the least frequent indefinite pronouns and pronoun types have been revealed, as well as the lexemes possessing medium frequencies. It has been identified that pronouns with 'some' are of highest frequency when pronouns with 'ever’ – the lowest, and pronouns with 'any’ are in between. The most frequent is the pronoun ‘something’, the least frequent is the pronoun ‘whoever’. Pronouns ‘anyone’ and ‘someone’ have demonstrated the average frequency in the microcorpus under analysis. With the use of the immediate constituents’ analysis and contextual analysis there have been revealed the peculiarities of the pronouns’ usage in the source text. Based on the transformational analysis there have been specified the translation methods and types of translation shifts employed for adequate rendering of the pronouns into Ukrainian. The most common methods of the analysed pronouns’ translation have been proved to be equivalent translation, omission, addition, lexical and lexico-grammatical replacements, with additions and grammatical shifts.

Способи відтворення неозначеності в німецькомовному перекладі роману Сергія Жадана «Депешмод»

This scientific research deals with a topical linguistic and translation problem – the category of definiteness / indefiniteness. The category is a functional-semantic, conceptual category in the Ukrainian language, and a grammatical category in the German language. That is why it is expressed differently in both languages. The article analyzes the works of leading linguists devoted to the study of issues related to the category of definiteness / indefiniteness from different points of view and on the basis of Ukrainian and German languages. The purpose of this article is to determine the means one can use to reproduce the category of indefiniteness in the Ukrainian-German translation. The object of this research is linguistic indefiniteness as it is, i.e. the name of the object it designates belongs to the class of similar phenomena. Indefiniteness describes something new. In the Ukrainian language it is mostly expressed by indefinite pronouns that indicate an indefinite person, object, quality, quantity, etc. Indefinite pronouns are the main means of reference. Linguistic researchers state that indefiniteness in the Ukrainian language is always marked. The subject of the given study is the analysis of implicit means of expression of indefiniteness in Ukrainian as well as means of its explicit expression in the translation of the novel “Depeche Mode” by S. Zhadan into German. Comparative and descriptive methods of linguistic research allow considering different ways of expression of indefiniteness in the translation of modern fiction. The analyzed material contains examples where indefiniteness in the original text is expressed by (якийсь, хтось, який-небудь, деякий, один з і т.д. / some, someone, some, one of, etc.) which is translated by articles (mostly indefinite articles – ein / eine), as well as by their equivalents in the target language (einer aus… / einer von…, irgendwelche, ein paar), rarely by a zero article. Reproduction of the quantitative expression of indefiniteness into the target language doesn’t present a translation problem. The analyzed material contains examples where the indefinite pronoun якийсь / some is rendered by means of the definite article der. Indefiniteness in not reproduced in this case. Among the methods of translation of indefiniteness there are translation transformations both lexical-semantic, such as addition, generalization, and lexicalgrammatical. It conclusion, the further research on the issue of reproduction of indefiniteness / the category of definiteness / indefiniteness on the basis of translations of texts of other genres and analysis of a wider range of means that express indefiniteness, as well as ways of its translation.

O pochodzeniu pol. ile (stpol. jele), czyli gdy etymologia spotyka składnię

Relative pronouns i- / je- and restrictive particle -le became conflated in concessive conditionals (e.g. No matter how much financial support we get, we will go ahead with our project). This syntactic environment explains, why Old Polish ile functioned in the oldest Polish texts as indefinite pronoun ‘no matter how much’ (so-called free choice determiner). The present paper aims to show, in which way the historical syntax may enrich our knowledge on etymology and language changes.

СЕМАНТИЧЕСКИЕ ОСОБЕННОСТИ КАУЗАТИВНОГО ЭМОТИВА «ИНТЕРЕСОВАТЬ» (ГРАДУАЛЬНЫЙ АСПЕКТ)

The semantics of causality has a complex system of means of expression, including shades of condition, purpose, cause, effect, emotional state, concessions. The shade of an indefinite, implicit reason is introduced by a combination with an indefinite pronoun for some reason. The causative emotive “to interest” contains the semantics of the emotional state, which constitutes the lexical meaning; causal semantics, manifested in the sentence. The primary is the semantics of the emotional state, the secondary is the causal meaning, which often manifests itself in the context. It is the ‘emotional state’ component that makes it possible to state the susceptibility to the grading process, that is, to indicate a greater or lesser degree of manifestation of a feature. Thanks to the analysis of examples, it is possible to build gradation scales on which all means are visible (adverbs of measure and degree very, strongly, especially, completely, extremely, terribly; particles not, nor, already), allowing to trace the degree of manifestation of a feature.

Аддитивная частица в тюркских языках Поволжья

Introduction. The paper deals with the functions of the additive clitic =DA in three Turkic languages of the Volga-Kama Sprachbund: Chuvash, Tatar, and Bashkir. It aims to describe in detail the use of the clitic in the languages in question by way of analyzing typologically expected functions, as well as additional functions observed in the collected data, with special attention paid to those that have not been described before and on differences of its usage. Materials and methods. The analysis was based on a variety of source materials, including Chuvash data collected with elicitation during fieldwork (Maloye Karachkino variety) and Tatar (Mishar dialect), Bashkir (Kubalyak variety) data collected from published corpora of oral texts. Results. According to our data, the functions of the additive clitic =DA may be as follows: proper additivity, scalar additivity, formation of the concessive clauses, mirativity, conjunction, universal quantification, marking of the numerals with collective meaning, marking of indefinites, distributive plurality, usage in complex numerals and verbal constructions (complex verbs and serial constructions), and marking of contrastive topic and conjunctional adverbs. The most frequent contexts for the additive clitic are those of conjunction, slightly less numerous are proper additivity contexts and then mirative contexts, with universal quantifiers and indefinite pronouns. The discursive functions are least typical of the additive clitic in the languages under study, except for the Bashkir material. Also, its use in peripheral, conjunction-related, functions may be specific: Chuvash and Bashkir data (but not Tatar) include the examples of the clitic marking distributive plurality and of its use in complex numerals; then, Tatar and Bashkir data (no data for Chuvash) indicates the use of the particle as a part of complex verbs; and, finally, only Bashkir material includes serial constructions, with the additive clitic as an obligatory part. In all the other functions, the use of the additive clitic appears to be similar in the three Turkic languages of the Volga-Kama Sprachbund.

Pragmatic Characteristics of Indefinite Pronouns in Croatian as a Second Language

This paper deals with some of the pragmatic characteristics of indefinite pronouns, specifically about the potential for expressing a negative attitude or stance by using them. The results of a quantitative survey will be presented exploring to what extent the potential to express a negative attitude using indefinite pronouns has been mastered. The research questionnaire consisted of two parts and examined the respondents’ command in terms of both comprehension and production of the pragmatic properties of indefinite pronouns in Croatian as a second language (CL2), and the examples used in the questionnaire were taken from the hrWaC 2.0 corpus (Ljubešić and Erjavec 2011). The research was conducted among students of CL2 at the levels B2 and C1 (N=60) who attended the programs of Croaticum – Centre for Croatian as Foreign and Second Language, University of Zagreb in the 2019/2020 academic year. The results obtained in this research can be applied in the development of learning materials intended for teaching the semantic and pragmatic features of indefinite pronouns in the instruction of CL2. They show that the pragmatic level needs to be included more thoroughly in the teaching of CL2 because its mastery is an essential component of language competence, especially at higher levels. The pragmatic properties of IP should also be taught, as should idiomatic expressions with IP. It is necessary to not only teach from an explicitly grammatical approach, but also to teach lexically in such a way that includes the pragmatic level, because IP have great pragmatic potential.

Факторы, влияющие на употребление анафорического местоимения 3-го лица после неопределенного местоимения «что-то»

The paper aims to identify the restrictions on the use of a third-person anaphoric pronoun after the indefinite pronoun “что-то (something)”. The article analyzes the results of a linguistic experiment during which Russian language bearers were asked to assess the correctness of pronoun “оно (it)” usage in the sentences containing anaphoric “оно (it)” with the antecedent “что-то (something)”. The author shows that respondents’ choices are determined by contextual characteristics of pronouns “что-то (something)” and “оно (it)”. These dependences are justified from a linguistic viewpoint. Scientific originality of the study lies in the fact that pronoun “что-то (something)” is considered as the antecedent of a third-person pronoun. The research findings are as follows: the author identifies the factors determining the use of anaphoric “оно (it)” after “что-то (something)” - subject position of a pronoun “что-то (something)” and perception of pronoun “оно (it)” referent as something mysterious and animated.

A Little Word That Means A Lot: A Reassessment of Singular They in a New Era of Gender Politics

Singular they has emerged as a key term in contemporary gender politics, reflecting growing usage of they/them as nonbinary personal pronouns. Drawing on interviews with 54 progressive gender activists, we consider how singular they can be used to resist and redo aspects of the prevailing gender structure. We identify three distinct usages of singular they: (1) as a nonbinary personal pronoun, (2) as a universal gender-neutral pronoun, and (3) as an indefinite pronoun when a person’s self-identified gender is unknown. While previous research on singular they as a gender-inclusive language practice has focused primarily on its usage as a nonbinary personal pronoun, our findings point to the relevance for gender politics of all three usages. Our analysis offers new insight into how nonbinary they challenges dominant gender norms and practices beyond incorporating additional gender categories. Given our findings, we propose further investigation of how using gender-neutral pronouns for everyone in specific contexts can advance progressive activists’ goals. Finally, we argue that the longstanding usage of singular they as an indefinite pronoun has new importance today in affirming gender as a self-determined identity.

Lexico-grammatical peculiarities of expressing indefinite semantic subject in russian and english

The aim of the study is to investigate the means of representation of the indefinitely expressed subject in Russian and English for the purpose of structuring and classifying the linguistic means of its expression. As the basis for investigation we chose the fictional text of the novel by M. A. Bulgakov "The Master and Margarita” and its parallel translation to English. In the paper we used the method of semantic analysis, contextual component analysis, comparative analysis and the method of linguistic modelling. The scientific novelty of the study consists in the results of the comparative analysis which show that there exist symmetrical and asymmetrical forms of expressing formally indefinite semantic subject. Symmetrical means of implicit expressing semantic subject is mostly nominalization. Generalized subject can be expressed either symmetrically or asymmetrically by various syntactic constructions in Russian and English. Asymmetrical means of expressing semantic subject can be traced in the syntactic constructions of different kind which are represented by binary oppositions. As a result of the research it has been found that the preferred ways of expressing indefinite semantic subject in Russian are indefinite pronouns; in English – passive constructions.

Semantic content of indefinite pronouns in the English literary texts

The goal of this article lies in analysis of the semantics of indefinite pronouns of the English language, which form the core of the semantic field of uncertainty from the perspective of functional linguistics. The subject of this research is the semantic content of English indefinite pronouns in the literary and publicistic texts. The relevance of this work is defined by the lack of works in both domestic and foreign modern linguistics dedicated to indefinite pronouns of the English language. The scientific novelty consists systematization of indefinite pronouns in form of semantic field and determination of possible varieties of uncertainty through the semantics of this group of pronouns in the English literary texts. It is established that in literary texts, the indefinite pronouns of the core of the semantic field of uncertainty of the English language are used for conveying quite very peculiar; however, the key components are uncertainty and generality in evaluation of the unfolding events. Uncertainty can be explicit or conditional. Generality also correlates with uncertainty, leaving out particularities. The absence of particularities is the main semantic indicator of the use of nuclear indefinite pronouns in the literary texts.

East Slavic indefinite pronouns: a corpus-based approach

The paper focuses on the development and functional distribution of indefinite pronouns in Old East Slavic, taking into account different sources, genres and registers. All the examples in the collected dataset were taken from the historical modules of the Russian National Corpus. They were tagged for type of indefinite marker, source (including originality and date), type of reference of the indefinite marker, semantics, type of discourse, and the degree of formality (formal or informal) present in the context. We then applied both descriptive and inferential statistical methods such as Random Forest analysis as well as multinomial logistic regression. Our analysis enabled us to identify the primary and secondary predictors of the choice of a particular indefinite marker and to trace the functional distribution of indefinite markers according to these factors.

Die Flexion der Indefinita jemand und niemand

Abstract This article investigates the inflection of the German indefinite pronouns jemand and niemand in the accusative and dative. The pronouns are used both with inflectional suffix (jemanden/jemandem, niemanden/niemandem) and without (jemand, niemand) and are thus an example of current variation in contemporary German. The grammars take an unusually liberal stance and describe both forms as correct, partially even with preference to the uninflected form. A corpus study which examines conceptually written data of the DeReKo (German reference corpus) and conceptually oral data of the DECOW16B (German web corpus), shows that over 90 % of occurrences are inflected. But almost 10 % of uninflected forms show that these formations are no arbitrary errors either. To find out what influences the presence or absence of the inflectional ending, a binary logistic regression model was calculated. The following factors proved to be significant influencing factors for inflection: the degree of formality (DeReKo vs. DECOW16B), the lexeme (jemand vs. niemand), the case (acc vs. dat), government by preposition vs. government by verb and the following nominalized adjective (jemand anderen). With regard to the different inflectional suffixes, the frequent use of -en in the dative stood out in particular. Although this form is classified as erroneous in all grammars, almost 30 % of the dative occurrences in informal DECOW16B data are formed in this way.