Compound indefinite pronouns in Slavonic languages. A contribution to a second generation semantic map of indefiniteness

通常，代词被认为是一类封闭的词。关于不定代词，这是有问题的。除了“传统的”不确定代词，如俄语的kto-to“某人”，kto-libo“任何人”等，斯拉夫语言中由于不断变化而出现了一类由多个正字法单词组成的不确定表达。然而，这些在语言学研究中没有得到充分的注意。它们包含疑问句代词，如俄语的kto“who”，并在其基本功能中表达不定指称。这种复合不定代词的一个例子是俄语neizvestno kto，字面意思是“未知的人”，它可能与代词kto-to“某人”出现在相同的上下文中。这些复合不定代词为功能范畴的不确定性提供了一个新的视角。本项目具有描述性和理论性两个维度。描述部分是创建一个清单的不确定代词在斯拉夫语，以及他们的用法的描述。包括形态句法和语义特征，并收集其使用频率的数据。参考语义方法和语义地图理论构成了本研究的理论框架。计划研究几种斯拉夫语言，即俄语和乌克兰语（东斯拉夫语）、波兰语和捷克语（西斯拉夫语）以及克罗地亚语（南斯拉夫语）。我们的第一个目标是创建这一类别的清单，迄今为止只研究了俄语和乌克兰语。依靠这个数据集，我们计划为语义地图的方法做出贡献。我们的起点是哈斯佩尔马斯在1997年提出的不确定性图。然而，我们并不认为这个地图是一个通用的语义空间，而是一个“已证实的变异模型”。更准确地说，我们的目标是对语义图及其在邻近域上的扩展进行经验规范。通过整合频率数据，我们创建了第二代地图，即所谓的加权地图。因此，这个项目将对我们对不确定性范畴的理解做出实质性的贡献。

Commonly pronouns are considered to be a closed class of words. With regard to indefinite pronouns this is problematic. Apart from “traditional” indefinite pronouns like Russian kto-to ‘somebody’, kto-libo ‘anybody’ etc. in the Slavonic languages emerged as a result of ongoing changes a distinct class of expressions of indefiniteness consisting of more than one orthographic word. These are, however, not adequately taken note of in linguistic research. They contain an interrogative pronoun such as Russian kto ‘who’ and express in their basic function indefinite reference. An example for such a compound indefinite pronoun is Russian neizvestno kto, literally ‘unknown who’, which may occur in the same context as the pronoun kto-to ‘somebody’. These compound indefinite pronouns facilitate a fresh perspective on the functional category indefiniteness. The present project has both a descriptive and a theoretical dimension. The descriptive part is the creation of an inventory of indefinite pronouns in Slavonic languages as well as a description of their usage. Morphosyntactic and semantic characteristics will be covered, and data of their frequency of usage will be gathered. A reference-semantic approach and the theory of semantic maps form the theoretical frame of the investigation. It is planned to examine several Slavonic languages, namely Russian and Ukrainian (East Slavonic), Polish and Czech (West Slavonic), and Croatian (South Slavonic). It is our first aim to create an inventory of this category, which so far has been studied only for Russian and Ukrainian. Relying on this dataset we plan to make a contribution to the approach of semantic maps. Our starting point is the map of indefiniteness as proposed by Haspelmath in 1997. Yet, we do not regard this map as a universal semantic space, but as “a model of attested variation”. More precisely, we aim at an empirical specification of the semantic map and of its extension on neighbouring domains. By integrating frequency data we create a map of the second generation, a so-called weighted map. Thus, this project will be a substantial contribution to our understanding of the category of indefiniteness.