Voprosy JazykoznanijaVoprosy JazykoznanijaВопросы языкознания0373-658X3034-5243The Russian Academy of Sciences65065210.31857/0373-658X.2023.1.19-53ArticlesСтатьиResearch ArticleWhat micro-diachronic analysis can tell us about unmarked indefinites: Evidence from RussianНеопределенные местоимения без маркера неопределенности через призму микродиахронического анализа: данные русского языкаPekelisOlga Evgen'evnaПекелисОльга Евгеньевнаvoprosy@mail.ruRussian State University for the HumanitiesРоссийский государственный гуманитарный университетHSE UniversityНациональный исследовательский университет «Высшая школа экономики»150220231NO1 (2023)№1 (2023)195331012025Copyright ©; 2023, Voprosy âzykoznaniâCopyright ©; 2023, Вопросы языкознания2023Voprosy âzykoznaniâВопросы языкознанияhttps://journals.eco-vector.com/0373-658X/article/view/650652

The paper deals with the evolution of Russian unmarked indefi nite pronouns, also known as bare interrogatives, since the 18ᵗʰ century. The Russian National Corpus data suggest that the distribution of unmarked indefinites both in modern Russian and in the Russian language of the 18ᵗʰ–19ᵗʰ centuries is not in line with previous proposals. Surprisingly, unmarked indefinites are more frequent in some specific contexts compared to non-specific contexts such as imperatives or subjunctive clauses. I argue that the distribution of Russian unmarked indefi nites can be accounted for by some sort of economy principle: due to the lack of a marker of indefiniteness, unmarked indefinites tend to be used in contexts that are strongly biased toward a certain interpretation of an indefinite in terms of specificity (specific known vs. specific unknown vs. non-specific). This analysis, as I suggest, correctly predicts two typological tendencies reported on unmarked indefinites in the literature.

Статья посвящена эволюции неопределенных местоимений без маркера неопределенности в русском языке c XVIII в. до наших дней. Данные Национального корпуса русского языка свидетельствуют о том, что дистрибуция таких местоимений и в современном языке, и в языке XVIII–XIX вв. не отвечает предлагавшимся ранее описаниям. Вопреки ожиданиям, местоимения без маркера более частотны в некоторых референтных контекстах, чем в таких нереферентных контекстах, как клаузы с императивом и с союзом чтобы. Дистрибуцию местоимений без маркера предлагается объяснять действием своего рода принципа экономии: в отсутствие маркера немаркированные местоимения тяготеют к контекстам, которые навязывают местоимению тот или иной тип референтности (референтные слабоопределенные vs. референтные неопределенные vs. нереферентные). Демонстрируется, что такой подход позволяет учесть две типологические тенденции, известные из литературы о неопределенных местоимениях.

corpus linguisticsdiachronypronounsindefinitenessRussianдиахрониякорпусная лингвистикаместоимениянеопределенностьрусский языкBarkhudarov et al. 1978 — ​Barkhudarov S. G. et al. (eds.). Slovar’ russkogo yazyka XI–XVII vekov [Dictionary of the Russian language of the 11th–17th centuries]. No. 5. Moscow: Nauka, 1978.Belyaev, Haug 2014 — ​Belyaev O., Haug D. The genesis of wh-based correlatives: From indefiniteness to relativization. Handout presented at the conf. Sinn und Bedeutung 19 (Formal Theories of Meaning Change). Göttingen, 15–17 September 2014.Belyaev, Haug 2020 — ​Belyaev O., Haug D. The genesis and typology of correlatives. Language, 2020, 96(4): 874–907.Bhatt, Pancheva 2006 — ​Bhatt R., Pancheva R. Conditionals. The Blackwell companion to syntax. Vol. 1. Everaert M., van Riemsdijk H. (eds.). Oxford: Blackwell, 2006, 638–687.Boas et al. 2019 — ​van Emde Boas E., de Bakker M., Rijksbaron A., Huitink L. Cambridge grammar of Classical Greek. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2019.Dobrushina 2009 — ​Dobrushina N. R. Semantika chastits by i b [Semantics of the particles by and b]. Korpusnye issledovaniya po russkoi grammatike [Corpus studies in Russian grammar]. Kiseleva Ks. L., Plungian V. A., Rakhilina E. V., Tatevosov S. G. (eds.). Moscow: Probel-2000, 2009, 281–313.Dobrushina 2012 — ​Dobrushina N. R. Subjunctive complement clauses in Russian. Russian Linguistics, 2012, 36(2): 121–156.Feuillet 2006 — ​Feuillet J. Introduction à la typologie linguistique. Paris: Honoré Champion, 2006.Gärtner 2009 — ​Gärtner H. More on the indefinite-interrogative affinity: The view from embedded non-finite interrogatives. Linguistic Typology, 2009, 13: 1–37.Giannakidou, Mari 2019 — ​Giannakidou A., Mari A. Modalization and bias in questions. Ms., 2019.http://home.uchicago.edu/ giannaki/pubs/modalquestions.pdf.Haspelmath 1997 — ​Haspelmath M. Indefinite pronouns. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997.Haspelmath 2003 — ​Haspelmath M. The geometry of grammatical meaning: Semantic maps and cross-linguistic comparison. The new psychology of language. Vol. 2. Tomasello M. (ed.). New York: Erlbaum, 2003, 211–243.Haspelmath 2008 — ​Haspelmath M. A frequentist explanation of some universals of reflexive marking. Linguistic Discovery, 2008, 6(1): 40–63.Jakobson 1971 — ​Jakobson R. Selected writings. Vol. II: Word and language. The Hague: Mouton, 1971.Kobozeva 1981 — ​Kobozeva I. M. Opyt pragmaticheskogo analiza to- i nibud’-mestoimenii. [Towards a pragmatic analysis of the to- and nibud’-pronouns]. Izvestiya AN SSSR. Seriya literatury i yazyka, 1981, 40(2): 165–172.Kobozeva 2000 — ​Kobozeva I. M. Lingvisticheskaya semantika [Linguistic semantics]. Moscow: Librokom, 2000.Kozhanov 2011 — ​Kozhanov K. A. Notes on the use of Lithuanian indefinite pronouns. Baltic Linguistics, 2011, 2: 79–110.Kozhanov 2015 — ​Kozhanov K. A. Lithuanian indefinite pronouns in contact. Contemporary approach to Baltic linguistics. Arkadiev P., Holvoet A., Wiemer B. (eds.). Berlin: De Gruyter, 2015, 465–490.Kratzer, Shimoyama 2002 — ​Kratzer A., Shimoyama J. Indeterminate pronouns: The view from Japanese. The Proc. of the 3rd Tokyo Conf. on Psycholinguistics. Otsu Y. (ed.). Tokyo: Hituzi Syobo, 2002, 1–25.Krys’ko et al. 2020 — ​Krys’ko V. B., Kuznetsov А. М., Pen’kova Y. А. Mestoimeniya [Pronouns]. Istoricheskaya grammatika russkogo yazyka: Entsiklopedicheskii slovar’ [Historical grammar of Russian: Encyclopaedic dictionary]. Krys’ko V. B. (ed.). Мoscow: Azbukovnik, 2020, 172–189.Kuz’mina 1989 — ​Kuz’mina S. M. Semantika i stilistika neopredelennykh mestoimenii [Semantics and stylistics of indefinite pronouns]. Grammaticheskie issledovaniya. Funktsional’no-stilisticheskii aspekt. Supersegmentnaya fonetika. Morfologicheskaya semantika [Grammatical studies. Functional-stylistic aspect. Suprasegmental phonetics. Morphological semantics]. Shmelev D. N. (ed.). Moscow: Nauka, 1989, 178–231.Letuchiy 2017 — ​Letuchiy A. B. Sravnitel’nye konstruktsii [Comparative constructions]. Materialy k korpusnoi grammatike russkogo yazyka [Materials for a corpus-based grammar of Russian]. No. 2: Sintaksicheskie konstruktsii i grammaticheskie kategorii [Syntactic constructions and grammatical categories]. Plungian V. A., Stoinova N. M. (eds.). St. Petersburg: Nestor-Istoriya, 2017, 132–204.Liu et al. 2021 — ​Liu M., Rotter S., Giannakidou A. Bias and modality in conditionals: Experimental evidence and theoretical implications. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 2021, 50: 1369–1399.https://doi.org/10.1007/s10936-021-09813-z.Malovitskii 1971 — ​Malovitskii L. J. Voprosy istorii predmetno-lichnykh mestoimenii (kto, chto) [Issues of history of substantival pronouns (kto, čto)]. Uchenye zapiski Leningradskogo gosudarstvennogo pedagogicheskogo instituta im. Gertsena, 1971, 517: 3–130.Oskol’skaya, Zevakhina 2013 — ​Oskol’skaya S. A., Zevakhina N. A. Neopredelennye mestoimeniya bez markera neopredelennosti v russkom yazyke [Indefinite pronouns without a marker of indefiniteness in Russian]. Handout presented at the international conf. “Constructional and Lexical Semantic Approaches to Russian” (St. Petersburg, 2013).Paducheva 1985 — ​Paducheva E. V. Vyskazyvanie i ego sootnesennost’ s deistvitel’nost’yu [Utterance and its relationship to reality]. Moscow: Nauka, 1985.Pen’kova 2016 — ​Pen’kova Ya. A. Neopredelennye mestoimeniya s formantami nibud’ i libo/lyubo v istorii russkogo yazyka XV–XVII vekov: Korpusnoe issledovanie [Indefinite pronouns of the nibud’- and libo/ljubo-series in the history of Russian of the 15th–17th centuries: A corpus study]. El’Manuscript–2016. Rašytinis palikimas ir informacinės technologijos. VI tarptautinė mokslinė konferencija Pranešimai ir tezės (Vilnius, 2016). Baranov V. A., Timchenko T. A. (eds.). Vilnius; Iževskas: Loreta Uzdraitė, 2016, 280–284.Penkova, Rabus 2021 — ​Penkova Y., Rabus A. East Slavic indefinite pronouns: A corpus-based approach. Russian Linguistics, 2021, 45: 227–252. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11185-021-09247-0.Rakhilina et al. 2016 — ​Rakhilina E. V., Borodina M. A., Reznikova T. I. “Taman’ segodnya”: korpusnoe issledovanie russkogo yazyka XIX veka [“Taman today”: A corpus study of 19ᵗʰ-century Russian]. Proc. of the V. V. Vinogradov Russian Language Institute, 2016, 10: 242–255.RNC — ​Russian National Corpus. https://ruscorpora.ru.Shmelev 2002 — ​Shmelev A. D. Russkii yazyk i vneyazykovaya deistvitel’nost’ [Russian language and extralinguistic reality]. Moscow: Yazyki Slavyanskoi Kul’tury, 2002.Schwarz 1998 — ​Schwarz B. Reduced conditionals in German: Event quantification and definiteness. Natural Language Semantics, 1998(6): 271–301.Schwyzer, Debrunner 1950 — ​Schwyzer E., Debrunner A. Griechische Grammatik: auf der Grundlage von Karl Brugmanns griechischer Grammatik. 2. Bd.: Syntax und syntaktische Stilistik. München: C. H. Beck’sche Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1950.Shvedova 1980 — ​Shvedova N. Yu. (ed.). Russkaya grammatika [Russian grammar]. Vol. 2: Sintaksis [Syntax]. Moscow: Nauka, 1980.Tatevosov 2002 — ​Tatevosov S. G. Semantika sostavlyayushchikh imennoi gruppy: kvantornye slova [The semantics of constituents of a noun phrase: Quantifier words]. Moscow: Gorky Institute of World Literature, 2002.Testelets 2001 — ​Testelets Ya. G. Vvedenie v obshchii sintaksis [Introduction to general syntax]. Moscow: Russian State Univ. for the Humanities, 2001.Tret’yakova 2004 — ​Tret’yakova O. D. Seriya neopredelennykh mestoimenii s nulevym markerom neopredelennosti v russkom yazyke [A series of indefinite pronouns with a zero marker of indefiniteness in Russian]. Computational linguistics and intellectual technologies. Proc. of the international conf. “Dialog-2004”. Kobozeva I. M., Narin’yani A. S., Selegei V. P. (eds.). Moscow, 2004, 602–607.Tret’yakova 2009a — ​Tret’yakova O. D. Neopredelennye mestoimeniya, lishennye markera neopredelennosti, v tipologicheskoi perspektive [Indefinite pronouns lacking overt markers of indefiniteness in a typological perspective]. Candidate diss., Lomonosov Moscow State Univ., 2009.Tret’yakova 2009b — ​Tret’yakova O. D. Funktsii neopredelennykh mestoimenii bez pokazatelya neopredelennosti (na materiale slavyanskikh yazykov) [Functions of indefinite pronouns lacking overt markers of indefiniteness in Slavic]. Vestnik Moskovskogo universiteta, seriya 9: Filologiya, 2009, 1: 134–147.Uryson 2011 — ​Uryson E. V. Opyt opisaniya semantiki soyuzov [An attempt of description of conjunctions semantics]. Moscow: Yazyki Slavyanskikh Kul’tur, 2011.Vallduví, Vilkuna 1998 — ​Vallduví E., Vilkuna M. On rheme and kontrast. Syntax and Semantics, 1998, 29 (Syntax at the limits. Culicover P., McNally L. (eds.)): 79–108.Yanko 2001 — ​Yanko T. E. Kommunikativnye strategii russkoi rechi [Communicative strategies of Russian speech]. Moscow: Yazyki Slavyanskoi Kul’tury, 2001.Yanko-Trinitskaya 1977 — ​Yanko-Trinitskaya N. A. Mestoimennye slova so znacheniem neopredelennosti [Pronominal words with the meaning of uncertainty]. Russkii yazyk v shkole, 1977, 1: 71–73.Yanovich 2005 — ​Yanovich I. Choice-functional series of indefinites and Hamblin semantics. Proc. of Semantics and Linguistic Theory (SALT)15. Georgala E., Howell J. (eds.). Ithaca (NY): Cornell Linguistics Publications, 2005, 309–326.