Haspelmath (1997): Indefinite Pronouns #

This file formalizes Haspelmath's implicational map of indefinite functions and the claims made over it: the adjacency requirement that every indefinite series cover a connected region of the nine-function map, the two further principles of §4.5 restricting which connected regions occur, and the series of eighteen languages of the 40-language sample as Appendix A draws them.

attestedCombinations is Table 4.1, the combinations of functions attested in the sample; Principle1 and Principle2 are the restrictions of §4.5, which excluded_connected shows to be independent of adjacency. A connected region with a second function contains a neighbour of each of its functions, so a series covering a leaf of the map (specific known, direct negation, free choice) covers the leaf's only neighbour (mem_of_adjacent_eq_singleton); the specific-known case is the ban on the ABA syncretism, so a connected region covers an interval of the three specificity functions (ordConnected_specificityFunctions).

The map itself is explained by the features of §5.6, binary properties of the functions such as specificity and the scope of negation: the functions sharing a value of a feature form a contiguous area (contiguous), the features tell every function apart but question, conditional and comparative (features_eq_iff), and an original free-choice indefinite extended toward the specific end loses one feature at each step (substance_chain), the steps that order the specificity functions (strictMono_features_toFunction). The negation feature is anti-morphic in exactly the licensing contexts realizing direct negation, but anti-additive in all of them only if doubt is set aside (carries_antiAdditive_iff).

The paradigms verify the adjacency requirement (sample_connected), the overlap of series that the book holds against contrast-based accounts of grammatical meaning (sample_overlap), and the human/non-human distinction the book finds practically everywhere, which only the Latvian kaut-series lacks (disjoint_forms_person_thing). The book's examples for fifteen of the languages are the rows of Data/Examples/Haspelmath1997.json, one row for each variant the book prints in a line; the figures cover the acceptable rows and exclude the starred ones (acceptable_covers, ungrammatical_excludes).

Implementation notes #

The map is Indefinite.implicationalMap and the adjacency requirement on a region the connectedness of the subgraph it induces; the book's numbering of the functions is HaspelmathFunction.number, so Table 4.1 is entered in the book's digit notation. Each paradigm follows the figure and text of its Appendix A section rather than Table 4.1 where the two differ: Hungarian akár- is 4589 in the table but excluded from questions and admitted under indirect negation in A.26, so it is entered as 5689. Finnish hyvänsä is entered with the comparative, which the book restricts to equative standards, and Swahili CL-o CL-ote with the comparative the book predicts without data; both are the book's own map-driven analyses. Series that are not pronouns in the book's sense (Georgian free-choice nebismieri, Turkish kimse, the Italian determiner qualsiasi) are omitted, so a paradigm need not cover all nine functions.

The features of §5.6 do not make the map a subgraph of a hypercube on their values: irrealis and question are adjacent and differ in scalarity and in the reversal of the scale, which classifies only question, and question and conditional are adjacent and differ in nothing. What holds is that adjacent functions differ in at most one feature classifying both (card_distinguishes_le_one); the converse fails, question and comparative differing in nothing without being adjacent.

§5.6 counts both negation functions anti-additive, after van der Wouden, who holds that no verb with negative properties is only monotone decreasing. The doubt context of PolarityItem.LicensingContext, which realizes indirect negation, models doubt by his own sketch of it as not believing the complement and is only downward entailing (carries_antiAdditive_iff, VanDerWouden1997.verb_strengths), so the claim fails for doubt on that analysis.

A Series is an indefinite series with the region its Appendix A figure encloses, named as the book names it. The region is the book's analysis of the series and not a lexical property of its members: a figure records where a series is possible and not where it is preferred (Russian -to is drawn over the functions of -nibud', which is preferred there), and it fills cells the book has no data for on the strength of the map (Yakut da and Mandarin bare interrogatives under indirect negation, the Swahili comparative). For those cells sample_connected restates the map; it tests the adjacency requirement on the others. Every language's series are those of its Fragment.

TODO #

The book counts 95 geometrically possible combinations under the adjacency requirement; the encoded map has 108 connected regions, and no reading of the edges of Fig. 4.4 recovers the book's count.

Haspelmath (1997): Indefinite Pronouns #

Implementation notes #

TODO #

References #

The map #

The features behind the map #

Negation and the licensing contexts #

Table 4.1 and the principles of §4.5 #

Eighteen languages of the 40-language sample #

The book's examples #