German indefinite pronouns

German has indefinite pronouns of two morphological kinds. Jemand 'someone', etwas 'something' and negative niemand, nichts are built on generic nouns (jemand from je-man 'ever-person'); the irgend- series, irgendwer, irgendwas, temporal je 'ever' and jeder 'any, every' are built with dedicated markers. Jemand runs from the specific functions to indirect negation. Irgend- is excluded where the speaker has the referent in mind and under direct negation and covers the rest of the map, a distribution it reached from an earlier non-specific use, as Aloni and Port describe; the two series overlap from specific unknown to indirect negation. The determiner irgendein is German.PolarityItems.irgendein. The members are those of Haspelmath's table, in their usual spelling where he hyphenates (irgend-wer), and the series are named as he names them. He parenthesizes the determiner ein of the etwas- series and auf keine Weise of the n- series as no members of them, and counts je and jeder in no series, though his figure draws a region for each.

References

• [AP15]
• [Has97]
• [KS17]

def German.Indefinites.jemand : IndefinitePronoun

jemand 'someone', of the etwas- series.

Equations

• German.Indefinites.jemand = { form := "jemand", ontology := Pronoun.OntologicalCategory.person }

def German.Indefinites.irgendwer : IndefinitePronoun

irgendwer, of the irgend- series.

Equations

• German.Indefinites.irgendwer = { form := "irgendwer", ontology := Pronoun.OntologicalCategory.person }

def German.Indefinites.je : IndefinitePronoun

Temporal je 'ever'.

Equations

• German.Indefinites.je = { form := "je", ontology := Pronoun.OntologicalCategory.time }

def German.Indefinites.jeder : IndefinitePronoun

The determiner jeder 'any, every'.

Equations

• German.Indefinites.jeder = { form := "jeder", ontology := Pronoun.OntologicalCategory.determiner }

def German.Indefinites.niemand : IndefinitePronoun

niemand 'nobody', of the n- series.

Equations

• German.Indefinites.niemand = { form := "niemand", ontology := Pronoun.OntologicalCategory.person }

The series

def German.Indefinites.etwasSeries : IndefinitePronoun.Series

The series of jemand and etwas, which Haspelmath names the etwas- series.

Equations

• German.Indefinites.etwasSeries = { name := "etwas-", members := {German.Indefinites.jemand, { form := "etwas", ontology := Pronoun.OntologicalCategory.thing }} }

def German.Indefinites.irgendSeries : IndefinitePronoun.Series

The irgend- series.

Equations

• One or more equations did not get rendered due to their size.

def German.Indefinites.jeSeries : IndefinitePronoun.Series

The series of temporal je.

Equations

• German.Indefinites.jeSeries = { name := "je", members := {German.Indefinites.je} }

def German.Indefinites.jederSeries : IndefinitePronoun.Series

The series of jeder.

Equations

• German.Indefinites.jederSeries = { name := "jeder", members := {German.Indefinites.jeder} }

def German.Indefinites.nSeries : IndefinitePronoun.Series

The negative n- series.

Equations

• One or more equations did not get rendered due to their size.