Talk:Indefinite pronoun

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This looks prescriptive. I think "singular they" used consistently is acceptable in standard English and has been for centuries. --Henrygb 12:01, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, the whole thing looks like it's copied from a grammar guide and not at all encyclopedic. --Dingbats 15:39, 11 June 2007 (UTC)

Disagree--singular they is lazy writing, and incorrect.

Indefinite it

How is there an article on indefinite pronouns that does not cover the indefinite "it?" "It" is probably the most incorrectly used pronoun in the English language for crying out loud. It is absurd that it is missing from this entry. (And yes, the last sentence purposely uses an indefinite "it" to emphasize the point.)

whoever is writing these grammar things

seriously man, just say what an indefinite prounoun is! people dont give a crap about the history of the indefinite pronoun!!

New speaker:

The whole discussion about the prounoun-antecedent agreement belongs in some place other than where it's been put. Maybe below the summary line, maybe in singular they, maybe a page entitled 'Pronoun-atecedent agreement in English.' It doesn't belong where it's been put. Also, the way this is set up, it's more of a category than anything else.

Two more cents for you.

Confusing Intro

Article launches straight into a debate about singular vs. plural verbs without so much as even explaining what an "indefinite pronoun" is. Is the article meant to be about indefinite pronouns in general, or just about this one issue? Matt 00:10, 23 July 2007 (UTC).

Reverting

All of the ‘fixes’ since the last vandalism have actually made the page worse. I’m reverting to the version (03:46, 29 April 2007) which actually started with a definition of an indefinite pronoun.

Just to be clear I’ll then remove the slightly POV waffle about plural pronouns agreeing with indefinite prounouns in a separate edit. There may be a way of including some of this information, but at present the sound of a barrow being pushed is very, very loud.

☸ Moilleadóir 15:40, 22 September 2007 (UTC)☏

List

If somebody can do some research into the words "whomever" and "whoever" that would be great. That may be an indefinite pronoun. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.18.217.236 (talk) 23:29, 31 March 2009 (UTC)

• I believe these are often classified as "indefinite relative pronouns". There are a bunch of them: who, whom, what, which, whoever, whomever, whatever, whichever, whosoever, whomsoever, and maybe some others too. I'm not sure if it's sensible to list them here or not. 86.161.41.247 (talk) 14:03, 15 April 2009 (UTC).

i know that wiki pedia you can scan information buet not is correctly"""" please put information that can serve please don´t put information just put, i love wiki pedia is rapidl. thanks for your attention.

Examples

A lot of the examples are formatted badly. Someone really needs to fix this! —Preceding unsigned comment added by Elium2 (talk • contribs) 19:47, 8 November 2010 (UTC)

Incomplete list

I believe that a number of quantifiers are missing, such as a number of, a lot of, a bunch of, which also means that there is a problem with set/class theory as well. But that is a tougher issue. Regards, 145.236.219.105 (talk) 05:30, 27 December 2010 (UTC)

Also, in everyday usage, isn't "he" an indefinite pronoun, as in "If someone has something to say, he'd better say it"? WayCon (talk) 03:29, 22 January 2011 (UTC)

Assertive vs. elective existential

What is the difference between the assertive and the elective existential? Anyone? 130.105.197.204 (talk) 07:38, 29 November 2016 (UTC)

Not sure what your question is. As the article says: "Indefinite pronouns ... include a number of sub-categories: ... assertive existential (such as somebody, something), elective existential (such as anyone, anything), ...". --Boson (talk) 14:28, 29 November 2016 (UTC)

Also, I reverted your most recent edit because I can't figure out what it was for. Removing non-breaking spaces is not a good idea. Graham87 15:51, 29 November 2016 (UTC)

It's obvious that he was asking for an actual definition of the terms assertive and elective and what the functional difference between the two categories is that makes the terms applicable. The answer is that assertive forms either assert (presuppose) or are used in contexts that assert that the referent of the pronoun is non-zero, i.e, the pronoun is assumed or implied to refer to at least one thing (or some minimal quantity in the case of non-count nouns), where as elective existential pronouns do not assert and are used in contexts that do not assert. In most context, these two forms are either in complementary distribution or are in free variation, but there are a few contexts that illustrate their distinction, like this one from my reference: "Bill's Lawyer failed to do anything that could have helped him." vs "Bill's lawyer failed to do something that could have helped him." The latter implies that there was some, specific thing that the lawyer failed to do, while the former does not necesarily imply that there was anything the lawyer could have done, only that he didn't do anything. --73.32.70.25 (talk) 22:38, 1 January 2019 (UTC)

References

who(so)ever's

It's whose(so)ver --Backinstadiums (talk) 11:59, 25 February 2021 (UTC)

Indefinite pronouns as determiners

There is a short sentence about it in the introduction that kinda talks about it but I think there should be some reference to something like "Gretchen enjoys anything sweet". MiXT4PE (talk) 19:16, 30 November 2022 (UTC)