Indefinite Pronouns
Also available:
HardbackPrice:
$60.00 (06)See more from the series
Description
This book is the first comprehensive and encyclopaedic investigation of indefinite pronouns (expressions like someone, anything, nowhere ) in the languages of the world. It shows that the range of variation in the functional and formal properties of indefinite pronouns is subject to a set of universal implicational constraints, and proposes explanations for these universals.Reviews
[series copy] Oxford Studies in Typology and Linguistic Theory offers a forum for promoting research and analysis that is both typologically and theoretically informed. Each book in the series will focus on a particular topic, providing an overview of the available cross-linguistic data and, at the same time, engaging such key theoretical issues as the boundaries or limitations of different approaches in dealing with typological data.
"...the book is clearly written and well edited, and the facts provided offer a great deal of food for thought to anyone with an interest in cross-linguistic work, whether such interest is confined within the Germanic family alone or is taken with a broader view."--American Journal of Germanic Linguistics and Literatures
"A welcome addition to the typological literature, this book is the most comprehensive work to date devoted exclusively to the description of indefinite pronouns in the world's languages....Haspelmath's presentation offers generally interesting reading, giving us many facts, testable universal claims, and tantalizing attempts at explanation....the book can serve...as a useful reference work."--Anthropological Linguistics
"One couldn't wish for a better book to inaugurate the series....The book is highly recommended, not only to field workers who will find that this study contains enough theoretical predictions to test against the indefinite pronoun system in the language or languages they are working on, but also to any linguist who wants to see a text book example of a linguistic analysis....Anyone working on two or more closely related languages should be required to read this book."--Notes on Linguistics
About the Author(s)
Martin Haspelmath, Department of Linguistics, Max Planck Institute of Evolutionary Anthropology, Germany
