Indefinites

En este trabajo se propone que en español la función informativa de tópico se puede codificar mediante una estructura gramatical en la que un grupo nominal indefinido (ya sea indeterminado, ya esté introducido por el indefinido un/a/os/as) es modificado por una oración de relativo restrictiva con contenido remático o focal. Esta estrategia topicalizadora se fundamenta en la posibilidad de usar anafóricamente el determinante indefinido, lo que contradice la idea generalmente aceptada de que los indefinidos, al contrario que los definidos, introducen nuevas entidades en el dominio del discurso y no entran en relaciones anafóricas (Karttunen 1976, Kemp 1981, Heim 1982, Leonetti 1999, 2007; Sánchez López 1999, entre otros). Datos como los de (1) desafían, por consiguiente, la definición de indefinitud y reclaman un análisis que explique, por una parte, cómo son posibles estos usos, y, por otra, hasta qué punto la codificación de la función de tópico mediante ciertas estructuras gramaticales puede tener consecuencias a nivel sintáctico-semántico.

Juan Antonio All/arez-Pedrosa Núñez Sancto Bartholomaeo, P. a (l790), Sidharubam seu Grammatica Samscrdamica. Siddarupam. Cui acadit Dissertatio historieo-critica in linguam Samscrdamieam vulgo Samseret dictam, in qua huius linguae exsistentia, origo, praestantia, antiquitas, cx-tensio} matemitas oslenditulj libri aliqui ea exarati eritice reansetulj etsimul aliquae antiquissimaegentilium orationes liturgicae palleis attinguntulj et explicantur, Roma, Propaganda Fide. Schlegel, Fr. von (lS08), Über die Sprache und Weisheit der Indier, Heidelberg, Mohr und Zimmer. Sorreguieta, T. de (1804), La semana española vascongada, la única en Europa y la más antigua del mundo, Madrid. , Horae syriacae seu Commelrtationes el antedata res I/ellitteras syriacas spectantia, Roma, Bourlié. Wiseman, N. P. (1836), Twelve lectures on the conllexion between sciencc and revealed religion, Londres, Booker. Wiseman, N. P. (1837), Diseours sur les rapports entre la sciellcc el la religioll r¿v¿Ue, París, Sapia. Wiseman, N. P. (1841), Conferenz.e sopra la eomrcssione delle scienz.e colla religione rivelata, Milán, Societa tipogr. de' Classici Italiani. Wiseman, N. P. (1844), Discursos sobre las relaciones que existen entre la ciencia y la religión revelada, Madrid, Imprenta deJosé Félix Palacios. Wiseman, N. P. (1856), Reeol/ections ofthe last four Popes and ofRome in their times, Londres, Hurst & Blackett. Wiseman, N. P. (1857), Fabiola o la iglesia de las catacumbas, Granada, Imprenta de José María Zamora. Zimmennann, K. (2001), «Los aportes de Hervás a la lingüística y su recepción por Humboldt», Manfred Tietz (ed.), Los jesuilas españoles expulsos. Su imagen, su contribución al saber sobre el mundo hispánico en la Europa del siglo XVIl], Ma· drid-Frankfurt am Main, Iberoamericana-Vervuert, 647-668.

Статья посвящена исследованию группы не полностью грамматикализованных местоимений – составных неопределенных местоимений (СНМ). Подобные единицы очень редко становятся предметом описания в грамматиках и исследованиях по неопределенности. На украинском языковом материале рассмотрена формальная и семантическая структура этих элементов, источники их грамматикализации, а также вопросы отграничения данной группы местоимений. Кроме того, в статье предложен корпусно-лингвистический метод, позволяющий систематически обнаруживать маркеры неопределенности СНМ и представляются результаты такого анализа.

Стаття присвячена дослідженню групи не повністю граматикалізованих неозначених займенників, а саме складених неозначених займенників (СНЗ), яким в граматичних довідниках і наукових роботах про неозначеність приділено мало уваги. На українському мовному матеріалі розглянуто формальну та семантичну структуру цих елементів, джерела їхньої граматикалізації та питання розмежування цієї групи займенників. Крім того, запропоновано корпусно-лінгвістичний метод, який уможливлює систематичне виявлення індикаторів неозначеності, наведено результати такого аналізу.

The article focuses on a group of not fully grammaticalized indefinite pronouns – the compound indefinite pronouns (ICPs). These ICPs enjoy little attention in grammar handbooks and research papers on indefiniteness. Based on the Ukrainian material, I examine the formal and semantic structure of these items, the source constructions for their grammaticalization and the problem of demarcation of the group. In addition, I propose the corpus-linguistic method, which makes possible a systematic detection of indefiniteness markers, and present the results of such an analysis.

Ce chapitre porte sur l'usage et l'évolution des formes de la négation de proposition. (pour la syntaxe de la phrase négative, voir ZZ chapitre 34.2) Seule la négation de proposition, exprimée sous forme de négation « de base » (à savoir ne-pas en français moderne, voir la section 2 ci-dessous) ou de négation « à mot-N » (par ex. ne-personne, ne-rien etc. en français moderne, voir la section 3 pour la définition de ce type de négation et une discussion de son évolution), sera prise en compte ici, et uniquement dans les propositions à verbe fini. La négation dite « de constituant » (par ex. non pas en français moderne, voir Klima 1964 : 307) sera, quant à elle, traitée en ZZ.

Welsh syntactic mutation and Arabic indefinite accusative: Case or configuration?
Welsh marks indefinite direct objects with lenition: Gwelodd Mair dŷ [Sawº Mair house (tŷ)] ‘Mair saw a house’. Welsh also applies “syntactic mutation” in a number of other circumstances: gwelwyd tŷ ar y bryn [was.seenº house on the hill], but with the prepositional phrase interposed: gwelwyd ar y bryn dŷ [was.seenº on the hill house] ‘a house was seen on the hill’.
Formal Arabic marks indefinite direct objects with -an (indefinite accusative): ra’at miryam bait.an [sawºF Miryam house.INDEF.ACC] ‘Miryam saw a house’. “Faulty indefinite accusative” is applied frequently by proficient users of Formal Arabic where there should be indefinite nominative: ru’iya ‘alà t-tall bait.(un) [was.seenºM on the-hill house.(INDEF.NOM)] ‒> ru’iya ‘alà t-tall bait.an [was.seenºM on the-hill house(INDEF.ACC)] ‘a house was seen on the hill’. Every time “faulty indefinite accusative” is found in Arabic, the Welsh equivalent would have “syntactic mutation”. In both cases, the phenomenon seems to be the result of an identical HEAD-TRIGGER-DEPENDENT rule marking the dependent. This rule would account for all cases of syntactic mutation in Welsh, and for both correct and faulty indefinite accusative in Arabic.
Historical evidence suggests that the rule governing indefinite accusative in Arabic has evolved from a semantic, case-based rule to a syntactic one based on simple configuration. If such a case > configuration evolution was possible for Arabic, it could provide a clue to the genesis and evolution of “syntactic mutation” in Welsh, which may also have originally been case-based, but has most likely evolved into a configurational rule. A widely studied rule of Welsh thus helps to explain a persistent, but little studied “faulty” pattern in Formal Arabic, and the likely genesis of that “faulty” rule in Arabic, in turn, may shed light, in this typological exercise, on the origin and development of the Welsh rule.

Mutamenti ciclici che coinvolgono la marca di negazione di frase sono ben noti e vanno tradizionalmente sotto il nome di Ciclo di Jespersen. In questo contributo si discutono alcuni dati dalla storia comparata delle lingue romanze (la nascita di nuovi indefiniti prefissati con la
particella di negazione "nec", gli esiti del latino "aliquis"), che mostrano che anche i pronomi e determinanti indefiniti sono soggetti a simili fenomeni di rinnovamento ciclico. Alla base di tali cicli si riscontrano analoghe pressioni funzionali: emerge come particolarmente rilevante a
questo proposito la tendenza pragmatica a sviluppare mezzi per l’espressione della negazione enfatica. Gli indefiniti, in quanto espressione di quantificazione esistenziale nella portata della
negazione, si qualificano come candidati ideali per l’espressione della negazione enfatica di frase. Grazie allo studio degli indefiniti si vedrà come questa pressione pragmatica basata sull’uso risulti, nel processo di mutamento, ancora più decisiva della tendenza a mantenere per
la negazione una realizzazione morfosintatticamente trasparente, tradizionalmente invocata come spiegazione per l’esistenza del Ciclo di Jespersen.

This paper follows the history of the sequence kol-še-hu (‘all-that-he’) from Rabbinic Hebrew until its uses in Modern Hebrew. It identifies changes already in the rabbinic corpus: at first these forms functioned in a compositional manner in free relative clauses; they then underwent a process of morphological univerbation in which they became a single linguistic unit that functions as an indefinite pronoun /determiner.
Furthermore, the paper points to a semantic change that took place in Modern Hebrew in which kolšehu denotes a universal quantification of kind instead of quantity (which was the case until the early stages of Modern Hebrew). It thus demonstrates the continuity between Modern Hebrew and earlier stages of Hebrew and the pertinence of the tools of historical linguistics for the study of diachronic phenomena in the emergence of Modern Hebrew.

La concordanza negativa è una strategia per esprimere la negazione di frase che si riscontra piuttosto frequentemente nelle lingue. Le dimensioni di variazione individuate dagli studi tipologici pongono interessanti interrogativi dal punto di vista della teoria sintattica, in particolare per quanto riguarda la distinzione tra concordanza negativa simmetrica e asimmetrica. Il presente contributo rappresenta una riflessione su questi temi attraverso l’esame dei dati del greco classico, che è caratterizzato da un sistema asimmetrico con interessanti
peculiarità rispetto a quelli maggiormente studiati. Sulla base di questi dati, si propone un’interpretazione originale dei fattori che determinano l’esistenza della concordanza negativa asimmetrica.

The paper explores the syntax of Hittite indefinite pronouns. It is universally accepted that indefinite pronouns are preverbal. Whereas this is certainly true, the real distribution is shown to be much more complex. I particularly analyze the placement of indefinite pronouns vis-à-vis preverbs, contrastive focus, verbs and negation. I also systematically confront behavior of indefinite NP (" a man "), on the one hand, and indefinite pronouns (" someone ")/indefinite pronouns + NP (" some man "), on the other, and show that they behave differently in syntactic terms contra existing accounts of Luraghi (1990) or Huggard (2014; 2015). Finally, clause second position of indefinite pronouns 1 is explored. I argue that it is a post-OH phenomenon due to the analogy from relative pronouns and subordinators like kuit " as " .

This dissertation provides the first unified account for the distribution and interpretation of wh-words in Hittite as indefinites, interrogatives and relativizers. Based on cross-linguistic comparanda, Hittite wh-words display the typical behavior of indefinite polarity items, and are prosodically deficient. As such, I argue that the surface positioning of wh-words in Hittite involves the syntax-semantics interface, and the syntax-phonology interface.
The non-standard word order of indefinites in Hittite is attributed to two factors. For an existential interpretation, Hittite wh-words must remain within the [vP] and are bound by the Rule of Existential Closure. For a presuppositional interpretation, indefinites undergo Quantifier Raising to IP. The final surface position of indefinites is determined by the syntax-phonology interface to satisfy prosodic restrictions: wh-words in Hittite are subject to Prosodic Inversion at Spell Out.
As an interrogative, I argue that the wh-form consists of a phonologically null determiner plus the Hittite wh-word kui-. Hittite wh-in situ is triggered by an intonational Q-morpheme, and is underspecified as [Q: ], enabling it to license both yes-no questions and wh-questions, as in modern French. Based on experimental evidence from living languages, I propose that the accentual nature of wh-words in Hittite interrogatives is the outcome of the stress assignment by the intonational Q- morpheme.
Finally, I offer the first alternative analysis to Held’s (1957) account of Hittite correlative clauses. I demonstrate that preposed “indeterminate” correlatives represent wh-conditional clauses, as in Mandarin Chinese, Serbo-Croatian, and early Latin. The accented nature of the wh-word in wh-conditionals is derived from the stress assignment by contrastive Focus. I show that the peculiar distribution of the wh-word in “determinate” preposed correlatives resembles that of indefinites: the wh-word is bound by the rule of Existential Closure and may be subject to Prosodic Inversion at Spell Out. I show that postposed correlatives may
be restrictive or non-restrictive, and that Middle Hittite and New Hittite texts also exhibit embedded relative clauses.

В представленной статье рассматриваются случаи выражения определённо- сти русскими неопределёнными местоимениями. В работе анализируются как традици- онно выделяемые местоименные серии, так и так называемые составные местоимения (невесть кто, сколько положено и т. п.). Показываются и анализируются основные типы контекстов, в которых наблюдается описываемое явление. С помощью инструментов метода семантического картирования выдвигается предположение о причинах того, что такие значения возможны лишь для некоторых местоимений разряда.

The article deals with the notion of definiteness expressed by Russian indefinite pronouns. It focuses on traditional groups of pronouns as well as so-called “compound pronouns” (nevest ́ kto, skol ́ko polozheno, etc). In addition, the basic types of context in which the phenomenon in question occurs are presented and analyzed. Using the instruments of semantic mapping, the author makes an assumption regarding the reasons why these types of meaning can only be conveyed by a limited number of indefinite pronouns.

This paper offers a typological classification of indefinite
pronouns attested in the main languages of the Anatolian family: Hittite, Luwian, Palaic, Lydian, and Lycian. It is observed that the majority of them goes back to two archetypes, which can be reconstructed
as *kwi(s)-Ho and *kwi(s)-ke on the ProtoAnatolian
level. The semantic and syntactic distribution between the Lycian indefinite pronouns tise and tike yields strong support to the hypothesis that they continue *kwi(s)-Ho and *kwi(s)-ke respectively. A number of scholars, however, have advocated the derivations tise < *kwi(s)-ḱo and tike < *kwi(s)-Ho on formal grounds. Considering the origin of these etymologies we come to the conclusion that they have no intrinsic value and
were used as ad hoc devices to prop up the controversial sound change *H > k in the history of Lycian.

Algerian Arabic has developed a new indefinite determiner kaš, with a number of loosely related functions. Despite its ubiquity in modern Algiers, this word is absent from 19th century sources, and appears to be a relatively recent development. More recent sources allude to it briefly without ever giving a full description. This article describes its syntactic distribution and its meaning in the dialect of Dellys (north-central Algeria) for the first time, identifying five distinct constructions in which kaš appears. It then examines this form's history based on written data. Based on the results, it reconstructs the reinterpretations that produced the present-day distribution of kaš, showing that it derives from a combination of an existential predicator with the polyfunctional morpheme ši. This finding confirms the existence of a grammaticalisation pathway from existential to indefinite quantifier, a question bearing on some scenarios proposed in the context of the debate within Arabic dialectology over the history of ši/šay'.

The history of Greek negation is interesting for our theoretical understanding of negation systems in at least two respects, which I will investigate in this presentation:
(i) Homeric Greek is a Double Negation system, while Classical Greek exhibits Negative Concord. Homeric Greek already shows signs of a diachronic development: there are two series of negative indefinites, an older plain one and a newer emphatic one. The emphatic series is formed by means of the focus-sensitive correlative negation oudé. The latter is the only negatively marked element to exhibit redundancy in the marking of negation in Homeric Greek. My hypothesis is that this element is responsible for the birth of [uNeg] elements of Concord in the language.
(ii) Classical Greek is a non-strict Negative Concord language. However, differently from other well-studied languages of this type (e.g. Italian, Spanish, Portuguese), it shows extremely frequent cases of pre-Infl Concord among multiple [uNeg] items, a more constrained option in Romance. A study of their distribution may help shed light on the interaction between the syntax of Focus and Negative Concord.

The empirical goal of this paper is to present a novel type of atypical use of demonstratives, characteristic for their co-occurrence with items typically used to mark indefiniteness, for their restriction to the weak use (i.e. prosodically deaccented, semantically non-contrastive), and for their particular semantic contribution. At the theoretical level, this paper aims to provide an analysis for the presented facts, and to contribute to answering the semantic question what is the range of referential properties available to the situation pro-noun representing the reference domain restriction in nominal expressions, often referred to as the resource situation (Büring 2004, Cooper 1993, Elbourne 2005, Etxeberria 2005, von Fintel 1994, Kratzer 1989, Percus 2000, Stanley and Szabo 2000, among many others) and to provide arguments for the claim that syntactic structure of nominal expressions in languages without articles do include the DP projection.

The differential object marking (the accusative case) emerges very early, with very few errors in the speech of children acquiring Turkish. However, its early use is restricted to definite objects, although in adult speech it can be used with a variety of different interpretations, among which are specificity, presuppositionality, and wide scope with respect to other constituents. In this study, through experiments, 4;0, 5;0 and 6;0 year old children’s comprehension of accusative indefinites was tested. The results of the experiments suggested that the children did not differentiate accusative-marked and non-case-marked objects in terms of their scope-taking properties, therefore provided evidence for an incomplete acquisition pattern despite the early emergence of the accusative case in spontaneous productions.

This article argues for a type of corpus-based contrastive research that is item-specific, predictive and hypothesis-driven. It reports on a programmatic study of the ways in which impersonalization is expressed in English and German.
Impersonalization is taken to be epitomized by human impersonal pronouns like German 'man' (e.g. 'Man lebt nur einmal' ‘You/one only live(s) once’). English does not have a specialized impersonal pronoun like Germ. 'man' and uses a variety of strategies instead. The question arises what determines the choice of a given impersonalization strategy in English. Drawing on relevant theoretical work and using data from a translation corpus (Europarl), variables potentially affecting the distribution of impersonalization strategies in English are identified, and their influence on the choice of a strategy is determined. By testing hypotheses derived from theoretical work and using multivariate quantitative methods of
analysis, the study is intended to illustrate how bridges can be built between fine-grained semantic analyses, on the one hand, and more coarse-grained, but empirically valid, corpus  research, on the other.

The paper deals with bare interrogatives, i.e. wh-words functioning as indefinite pronouns under specific licencing conditions in narrow PIE and in the Anatolian branch. It is claimed that Middle/New Hittite bare interrogatives cannot be directly compared with narrow PIE ones because there are no OH/OS data and the Luwian branch does not attest bare interrogatives either. Thus bare interrogatives in conditional clauses and after negation marker have to be an independent innovation within historical Hittite and narrow IE. This might be a syntactic argument in favor of the Indo-Hittite hypothesis.

institute of slavic studies, Russian academy of sciences, Moscow A distributional schema of Lithuanian indefinite pronouns was provided in Haspelmath (1997). In this paper, a more detailed investigation of the functions of Lithuanian indefinite pronouns is conducted. It demonstrates and explains why some of the series can occasionally occur in contexts where they are not usually supposed to be used. Particular attention is paid to the contexts where several series of indefinites are possible. The paper analyses the differences between the series in such contexts of competition. As a result, a more fine-grained description of the highly complex system of Lithuanian indefinite pronouns is arrived at.

The paper explores the syntax of Hittite indefinite pronouns. It argues that Hittite NPIs licensed by different licensors (negation markers and condition-als) are phonologically and morphonologically identical, but behave differently in syntactic terms depending on the licensor. There are two points of syntactic difference. The first consists in the obligatory split of the phrase which is headed by the NPI licensed by the negation marker vs. the optional split of the phrase headed by the NPI licensed by the conditional. The second point of difference is that in the majority of cases NPIs licensed by condi-tionals are in front of the preverb whereas the dominating position of NPIs licensed by negation is between the preverb and the verb. This Hittite system is cross-linguistically rare. It is clearly distinct from the commonly described systems where one phonological NPI pronoun behaves syntactically in the same way when licensed by different licensors. It is remotely similar to the systems of the Russian type with different NPI pronouns licensed by different licensors. In Hittite, as different from, for example, Russian, the same NPI pronoun is licensed in certain non-veridical contexts, but, similarly to Russian, there is a difference between the conditional and negative licensing contexts. In Hittite the difference lies in the morphosyntax of the same pronoun whereas in Russian in the fact that different pronouns are licensed by conditional and negation structures. Thus Hittite and Russian instantiate different possibilities of complex NPI systems.

Hittite attests two distinct second positions, occupied by (a) Wackernagel enclitics; (b) non-Wackernagel enclitics -(m)a, -(y)a as well as stressed indefinite and correlative pronouns. I argue that Hittite provides novel data on the syntax-prosody interface as reflected in the operation of the second position constraint: the words belonging to group (b) combine properties which are typically ascribed to stressed and unstressed second position constituents. These findings show that the boundary between the stressed, syntactically conditioned second position exemplified by Germanic verb-second and the unstressed, phonologically conditioned second position of Wackernagel enclitics is much more blurred than is commonly acknowledged.

This study represents the first typological investigation of additive and scalar additive markers that correspond to Engl. too, also, as well, and even. It is cross-linguistically common for additives to fulfill a wide range of functions including, among others, (scalar) additivity, the marking of concessive clauses, indefinite pronouns, association with contrastive topics, and constituent coordination. Based on data from 42 languages from all over the world this paper proposes a list of functions that are commonly expressed by additives and provides explanations for how and why these functions relate to each other. The distribution of these functions and their connections are then interpreted by means of categorical and distance-based semantic maps.

Fragesätze und Fragen : Saarbrücken 1990 / hrsg. von M arg a Reis und Inger RosengTcn. -Tübingen : Niemeyer, 1991 (Linguistische Arbeiten ; 257) (Referate anlässlich der ... Jahrestagung der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Sprachwissenschaft ; 12) NE: Reis, M arg a [Hrsg.]; 1. GT; Deutsche Gesellschaft für Sprachwissenschaft: Referate anlässlich der ...GT Das Werk einschließlich aller seiner Teile ist urheberrechtlich geschützt. Jede Verwertung außerhalb der engen Grenzen des Urheberrechtsgesetzes ist ohne Zustimmung des Verlages unzulässig und strafbar. Das gilt insbesondere für Vervielfältigungen, Übersetzungen, Mikroverfilmungen und die Einspeichening und Verarbeitung in elektronischen Systemen.

В статье описывается применение метода семантического картирования для описания местоименного компонента значения составных местоимений русского языка: единиц типа «кто угодно», «какой бы то ни было», которые можно отнести к разряду неопределенных местоимений. C одной стороны, показываются преимущества использования метода для описания значения составных местоимений, а с другой стороны, приводятся примеры семантических карт, нарушающих принцип смежности (adjacency requirement) и подвергающих сомнению объяснительную силу метода.

The article depicts the use of a semantic mapping method for the description of the pronoun component of meaning in the compound pronouns of the Russian language: such units as «кто угодно» / “anyone”, «какой бы то ни было» / “any whatsoever” that can be classified as indefinite pronouns. On the one hand, the advantages of using the method for the description of compound pronouns meaning are shown, and on the other hand, the examples of semantic maps that violate the adjacency requirement and question the explanatory power of the method are given.

In languages like Dutch and German, certain instances of negation,
such as negated indefinites, are ruled out in out-of-the-blue contexts, i.e. with the
unmarked reading where negation outscopes an unfocussed indefinite (*Er kann
nicht eine Fremdsprache. ‘He speaks not a foreign language.’). Such instances
are, however, fine in NPI licensing contexts. Schwarz (2004) and Schwarz &
Bhatt (2006) argue that in such cases the negative marker is not a plain negation,
but rather a homophonous marker of light negation, which they take to be an
NPI. In this paper I argue, though, that this phenomenon can be explained by
adopting standard pragmatic assumptions. In short, I argue that such instances of
negation are bad due to the existence of some alternative expression that only
conveys the unmarked reading. In the example above, the alternative expression
contains a negative indefinite: Er kann keine Fremdsparache. (‘He speaks no
foreign language.’). Uttering a less simple construction, such as the example
above with the negated indefinite, will give rise to an implicature that states that
the speaker does not intend such utterances with their unmarked readings, since
the unmarked reading could have been conveyed in a simpler manner. This
implicature, then, is suppressed in NPI licensing contexts.

In this paper I give an interpretation of the lost Oscan graffito ST Po 79, including the drawing around the eight letters of text.
In the presented view, not only often-cited Osc. pis.pis but also the remaining two letters are written in Oscan script and most likely belong together with the drawing. The drawing itself can be interpreted as turn-by-turn directions leading to the Forum and the Temple of Jupiter.
Furthermore, the indefinite (former relative) pronoun PItal. *kuis⸗kuis ‘whoever’ (Osc. pispis ‘anyone’, Lat. quisquis ‘whoever; anyone’) is traced back to a collocation of a relative and an indefinite pronoun and identified with Gk. ὅσ⸗τις ‘whoever’.

ABSTRACT When choosing among various referring expressions, speakers typically choose a form that reflects the audience’s mental representation of the intended referent. For instance, a speaker will most likely use a definite rather than indefinite description when introducing an entity that the addressee can uniquely identify. However, also considerations other than referent accessibility and the mental state of the addressee may affect the choice of nominal form. For instance, in a speech report such as Mary asked whether he had seen a dog, the choice of the expression a dog is influenced by the speaker’s intention to truthfully report on what was originally communicated as well as considerations about the representation of the referent in the mental model of the present addressee—and more than one nominal form may be valid. This paper reports on a pen-and-pencil experiment conducted to test how specific indefinites are reported on in direct and indirect speech in the four languages Czech, English, German, and Norwegian. The experiment supports the claim that indirect speech allows for a wider range of nominal forms than direct speech when the speaker reports on a speech event that originally contained a specific indefinite. Nevertheless, the study shows that the subjects prefer to use an indefinite description to report on a specific indefinite in indirect speech, even though also other forms are valid. This suggests that speaker’s effort, and not only hearer’s processing cost, may be crucial for the choice of nominal form. The comparison of the four languages reveals that general cognitive constraints related to reference assignment interact with language-specific conditions; examples are constraints on discourse type and considerations of processing economy following from the language’s lexical and morpho-syntactic inventory.

The article focuses on a  group of not fully grammaticalized indefinite pronouns – the compound indefinite pronouns (ICPs). These ICPs enjoy little attention in grammar handbooks and research papers on indefiniteness. Based on the Ukrainian material, the formal and semantic structure of these items are examined as well as the source constructions for their grammaticalization and the problem of demarcation of the group. In addition, the corpus-linguistic method, which makes Zusammengesetzte Indefinitpronomen im Ukrainischen possible a systematic detection of indefiniteness markers, is proposed along with the results of such an analysis.

Стаття присвячена дослідженню групи не повністю граматикалізованих неозначених займенників, а саме, складених неозначених займенників (СНЗ), яким в граматичних довідниках і наукових роботах про неозначеність приділяється мало уваги. На українських прикладах розглядаються формальна і  семантична структура цих елементів, джерела їхньої граматикалізації та
питання розмежування цієї групи займенників. Крім того, автор пропонує корпусно-лінгвістичний метод, який уможливлює систематичне виявлення індикаторів неозначеності, і наводить результати такого аналізу.

Mit Univerbierung liefert Andreas Opfermann einen wichtigen Beitrag zur Erforschung des bisher eher stiefmütterlich behandelten Wortbildungsprozesses Univerbierung. Anhand instruktiver Beispiele wird gezeigt, dass es sich bei der Univerbierung um eine passive Art der Lexikonerweiterung handelt, die im Gegensatz zu Derivation und Komposition keinen mechanischen Wortbildungsregeln folgt. Vielmehr wird offenbar, dass Univerbierung nicht synchron und intentional angewandt wird, sondern diachron und graduell verläuft.
Es werden sowohl die Prozesse (Lautwandel, lexikalische Konservierung, Desemantisierung, morphologische Konservierung, Deparadigmatisierung), die bei der Verschmelzung habitualisierter Kollokationen ablaufen, als auch deren Vernetzung herausgearbeitet und die dabei erzielten Effekte (Frequenzeffekte, Kollokationsenge, Grammatikalisierung) anschaulich dargestellt. Neben oft neuen syntaktischen, syntagmatischen, semantischen, etymologischen, morphologischen und phonologischen Erkenntnissen zu den behandelten Fällen von Univerbierung und weiteren Kollokationen und Lexemen werden auch neue Forschungsergebnisse zu textkritischen und interpretatorischen Problemen der lateinischen, griechischen und frühromanischen Philologie sowie zur lateinischen Epigraphik geliefert. Besonders das herangezogene lateinische Kernkorpus, eine hinsichtlich ihrer Sprachwirklichkeit ausführlich kommentierte Sammlung von lateinischen Texten von Plautus bis Augustin, stellt in seiner „diachronen Synchronizität“ eine nützliche Arbeitsgrundlage für weitere methodisch fundierte Studien zum Sprachwandel im Lateinischen dar.
Andreas Opfermanns neue Einsichten beweisen den Nutzen einer intensiven Beschäftigung mit Univerbierung. Neben der Wortbildungsforschung profitieren auch die Etymologie, die klassische Philologie, die allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft sowie die Indogermanistik und Romanistik von dieser Arbeit.
Die dem vorliegenden Band zugrundeliegende indogermanistische Dissertation wurde von der Indogermanischen Gesellschaft als die zweitbeste des Jahres 2015 gekürt.

Rezension: Dieu, Éric. 2019, in Kratylos 64, 91–96.

The suffix -nukw has a curious synchronic distribution in Kwak'wala.  In addition to its productive use in nominal possessive constructions, it can be used on verbal stems along with passive suffixes to form indefinite object constructions with agentive subjects.  These agentive subjects are puzzling given the presence of passive morphology on the verb.  In this paper I document the syntactic and semantic properties of -nukw constructions in the synchronic domain and discuss some changes that have occurred in the distribution of this suffix since the generation of speakers consultant by Franz Boas and George Hunt.

Pnar is a Mon-Khmer language spoken in the state of Meghalaya in the Indian Union. In India the Mon-Khmer languages are geographically represented only in Meghalaya and in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. The Nicobar languages, namely, Car Nicobarese, Chaura, Teressa, Southern Nicobarese, Central Nicobarese and Shom Peng are spoken by the tribal groups inhabiting the Nicobar Islands (Gordon, 2005). Meghalaya represents the Khasian sub-branch of the Northern Mon-Khmer languages. The term ‘Khasi’ was traditionally understood to cover all the seven/eight Mon-Khmer tribes inhabiting Meghalaya. However the term is now increasingly used to refer to a particular sub-tribe called Khynriam, whose variety of Khasi has been adopted as the standard form and used in education, literature and media. What we find in standard literature on the Khasi language is the description and analysis of this particular variety of the language spoken mainly in Cherrapunjee (called ‘Sohra’ locally) and called [ka-tien-sohra] ‘the language of Sohra’. Pnar is the spoken language of the second largest sub-group among the Khasi/ Mon-Khmer tribes after Khynriam. Pnar is spoken in the Jaintia Hills District of Meghalaya.

Wh-words in Mandarin Chinese exhibit quantificational variability. Aside from a typical interrogative reading, wh-words can also have an existential indefinite reading or a universal reading. Which reading it is depends on the linguistic environments in which they occur. The present study investigates Mandarin-speaking children's sensitivity to the linguistic environments for the noninterrogative use of wh-words: the existential reading and the universal reading. The results show that young children exhibited adultlike sensitivity to the licensing environments for the noninterrogative use of wh-words. Given the difficulty that children may have in using the input data to learn the interpretation of whwords and the early emergence of this knowledge, we propose that the licensing mechanism for the noninterrogative use of wh-words is innate.