Íslenskt mál og almenn málfræði - 01.01.2018, Síða 40

summary
‘“Everyone has something to boast of”
Changes in the functional range of some indefinite pronouns’
Keywords: indefinite pronouns, implicational map, negative polarity items, functions, lan-
guage change
Indefinite pronouns that can be translated by, e.g., some, any and no (and similar English
pronouns) are a remarkable group of words. Two characteristics are of particular interest.
First, they show a great cross-linguistic diversity regarding functional patterns. Secondly,
their functional patterns are diachronically very unstable. This was demonstrated in
Martin Haspelmath’s (1997) extensive typological investigation on forty languages, includ-
ing Modern Icelandic. In this article, Haspelmath’s investigation is introduced and his
anal ysis of Icelandic evaluated. Consequently, his approach — based on nine core functions
arranged on an implicational map — is used to map the functions of a few Old Icelandic
indefinite pronouns, especially nokkur, einhver, neinn and engi (now enginn). It turns out
that the functional pattern has changed considerably. The range of nokkur, neinn and
engi(nn) has diminished, the range of einhver is somewhat different than before and its fre-
quency in certain functions has increased greatly. A contrast between einhver and nokkur
in yes/no-questions, and even in conditional clauses, found in Modern Icelandic (einhver is
used if the speaker’s expectations are positive or neutral but nokkur if they are negative),
is not noticeable in Old Icelandic.
Katrín Axelsdóttir
Íslensku- og menningardeild
Háskóla Íslands
Nýja-Garði við Sæmundargötu
IS-101 Reykjavík, ÍSLAND
katax@hi.is
Katrín Axelsdóttir40