Indeterminate pronoun explained

An indeterminate pronoun is a pronoun which can show a variety of readings depending on the type of sentence it occurs in. The term "indeterminate pronoun" originates in Kuroda's (1965) thesis and is typically used in reference to wh-indeterminates, which are pronouns which function as an interrogative pronoun in questions, yet come to have additional meanings with other grammatical operators.^{[1] [2] [3]} For example, in Japanese, dare means 'who' in a constituent question like (1) formed with the question-forming operator no:

However, in a statement (2), in combination with the particle ka, dare 'who' acquires an existential 'someone' meaning:

With yet another particle -mo, dare 'who' expresses a universal meaning as in (3):^[4]

Languages with wh-indeterminates are typologically very common,^{[2] [5]} and this is a characteristic of many language families such as Uralic, Turkic, Dravidian, and the Slavic sub-branch of Indo-European.^[6] The syntactic and semantic properties of indeterminate pronouns and their interactions with different grammatical operators is a major topic within the study of the syntax-semantics interface.^{[7] [8]}

See also

• Alternative semantics
• Free choice inference
• Indefinite pronoun
• Wh-movement

Notes and References

1. S.Y.. Kuroda . Generative Grammatical Studies in the Japanese Language. MIT. 1965.
2. Book: Angelika . Kratzer. Junko. Shimoyama. 2002. Indeterminate Pronouns: The View from Japanese. The Proceedings of the Third Tokyo Conference on Psycholinguistics. 1–25. Tokyo. Hituzi Press. Yukio. Otsu.
3. Book: Vaneeta. Dayal. Questions. Oxford University Press. 2016. Oxford. 239.
4. News: Moreno. Mitrović. Uli. Sauerland. Two conjunctions are better than one. Acta Linguistica Hungarica. 63. 4. 2016. 471–494.
5. Book: Haspelmath, Martin. 2013. Indefinite Pronouns. The World Atlas of Language Structures Online. Matthew S.. Dryer. Martin. Haspelmath. Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. Leipzig.
6. Anna. Szabolcsi. What do quantifier particles do?. Linguistics and Philosophy. 159–204. 2015. 38. 2 . 10.1007/s10988-015-9166-z. 254750503 . 10.1.1.469.1211.
7. Junko. Shimoyama. WH-Constructions in Japanese. University of Massachusetts, Amherst.
8. Junko . Shimoyama. Indeterminate Phrase Quantification in Japanese. Natural Language Semantics. 14. 139–173. 2006. 2 . 10.1007/s11050-006-0001-5. 121615386 .