Indefinite and negative pronouns

English indefinite pronouns. In grammatical tradition the class of indefinite pronouns is said to include some, any, every (and their compounds something, anything, somebody, anybody, someone, anyone) all, each, either, much, many, few, little, etc., that is words of different lexical and grammatical nature.

Ukrainian indefinite pronouns: дехто, дещо, хтось, щось, хто-небудь, що-небудь, який-небудь, будь-хто, будь-що, казна-що, казна-хто, абихто, абиякий, etc. are built from the corresponding interrogative pronouns by adding particles -небудь, казна-, хтозна-, аби-, де-, -сь. They are used to point towards unknown, indefinite objects and their qualities, e.g.: Хтось задихається над ними – хто це, хто це? (І. Драч).

Following is the contrastive analysis of indefinite pronouns in both languages. These pronouns in English and in Ukrainian leave the unclear or non-defined notion about some object, person or quality, characteristics or quantity of objects.

The characteristic feature of these pronouns in both languages is the tendency to differentiate the person and the non-person (compare in English somebody, something; in Ukrainian дещо, дехто; щось, хтось).

In English the meaning and the usage of pronouns of this class often depends on syntactic factors: pronouns some, any; something, anything; somebody, anybody and others can render the similar meaning in different types of sentences (some and its derivatives – in affirmative sentences, any and its derivatives – in interrogative and negative sentences). On the other hand, pronouns that have any in their structure have different meanings in interrogative or negative and affirmative sentences. Ukrainian indefinite pronouns, vice versa, have stable, forever attached to them lexical meaning, which does not depend on the syntactic context and is not changed according to the sentence type.

The English indefinite pronouns somebody, anybody and someone, anyone, which denote the person, have the forms of common and possessive cases and can be used in the function of attribute (somebody’s bag “чийсь портфель”). The rest of nouns of this type are unchangeable.

In Ukrainian all indefinite pronouns have the category of case, and those with interrogative pronouns чий, який in their structure – also have the category of gender and number. Altogether, Ukrainian interrogative, relative and indefinite pronouns possess the category of case, e.g.: хто, кого, кому, кого, ким, на кому (на кім). Ukrainian interrogative-relative pronouns of the type чий have categories of case, number and gender, e.g.: чий, чиє, чия, чиї; чий, чийого, чийому, чиїм, на чийому.

English indefinite pronouns some, any are often used as noun determiners, being almost similar to articles [5; 66–67].

English negative pronouns are no, nobody, nobody’s, none, nothing, neither, nowhere.

Ukrainian negative pronouns include such words as ніхто, ніщо, ніякий, нічий. They are built from the corresponding interrogative pronouns by adding the particle ні- and point towards the total absence of some object or quality. Therefore they possess grammar categories characteristic of interrogative pronouns.

Following is the contrastive analysis of negative pronouns in both languages. Pronouns of this type denote the absence of some object or quality. In both languages they correlate with indefinite pronouns, in English also with the so-called “generalizing” pronouns (all, everybody, everything, both (the meaning of collectiveness) every, each either (the meaning of separateness), and in Ukrainian – with the part of defining pronouns, objecting to the availability of the notion, expressed by the mentioned above pronouns.

The number of such pronouns in both languages is not large; in English here belong no, nobody, nothing, none, no one, neither; in Ukrainian – ніхто, ніщо, нічий, ніякий, conversational нікотрий. English negative pronouns are created by joining together the main negative pronoun no with nouns of a very abstract meaning: body, thing and the indefinite pronoun one. Corresponding Ukrainian pronouns are formed by adding the negative particle ні to interrogative pronouns хто, що, який, чий.

In English negative pronouns are unchangeable, except nobody and no one, which have common and possessive cases. Ukrainian negative pronouns are all declined in a similar way to interrogative pronouns, from which they are created. Two negative pronouns нічий, ніякий have the forms of gender and number.

The English pronoun none is often used to replace the word combination “ no + noun”, e.g.: There was no apparent slope downward, and distinctly none (no slope) upward (Th. Dreiser).

In both languages negative pronouns serve in the sentence as a lexical means to express negation (оформлення заперечення). In English their presence is enough to make the sentence a negative one, and that is why the predicate is not put into the negative form (I know nobody here). In Ukrainian the grammatical and the lexical expression of negation in the sentence are distinctly differentiated. The negative form of the predicate is obligatory even in cases when we have the negative pronoun in the sentence (Я не знаю нікого) [5; 67].