Timeline for Why do we use "someone" to signify one person?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
12 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Feb 20, 2019 at 16:59 | comment | added | LjL | Någon doesn't come from några or något fused with en. Instead, it is its own inflected form for the common gender, parallel to något for the neuter gender, and not derived from it. Similarly, alguién comes from Latin aliquem, accusative of the word that means directly "someone" (although that is in turn just the masculine or feminine form of the same word, aliquod, which went on to form algo in Spanish). So while these words have roots that mean "some", it's not "some object" + "people instead". It's directly "some person", or "something not neuter". | |
| Apr 25, 2014 at 5:29 | comment | added | hippietrail | "Some" does not mean "many". | |
| Apr 24, 2014 at 11:55 | answer | added | Darkgamma | timeline score: 0 | |
| Dec 24, 2013 at 4:34 | history | tweeted | twitter.com/#!/StackLinguist/status/415339569266327552 | ||
| Dec 14, 2013 at 4:17 | comment | added | neubau | Thai seems to work like Malay, except using word order rather than reduplication: neung khon ‘one person’, but khon neung ‘someone’ (neung = one, khon = people classifier.) ‘Some people’ would be bang khon. Thai ESL learners often make the mistake of giving ‘someone’ a plural referent, so clearly this feature of English is a bit strange to them too! | |
| Dec 13, 2013 at 15:13 | comment | added | P Elliott | One interesting question to ask about English specifically is whether one in someone should be analysed as the (somewhat archaic) gender neutral 3rd person pronoun, e.g. one should never go shopping alone, the numeral one, or anaphoric one, e.g. John bought a book, and Sally bought one too. The fact that someone carries an animacy presupposition suggests that the first option is the correct one, but i have no idea how to make this work semantically. A quantifier shouldn't be able to combine with a pronoun. | |
| Dec 13, 2013 at 11:34 | comment | added | P Elliott | I would analyse some as having neither a singular nor a plural meaning - rather, it's something quantificational. Semantically, it can be analysed as the existential quantifier. some boy arrived means there is an individual x s.t. x is a boy and x arrived, whereas some boys arrived mens there is a group of individuals x s.t. that group of individuals arrived. Check out the SEP entry on generalised quantifiers for more details: plato.stanford.edu/entries/generalized-quantifiers | |
| Dec 13, 2013 at 3:00 | answer | added | Atamiri | timeline score: 2 | |
| Dec 12, 2013 at 23:11 | comment | added | TKR | I'm not sure if this is what's misleading you, but some does not have a plural meaning in this case. Some can be a plural indefinite as in some people, but it can also be a singular indefinite as in some person. It doesn't mean "many", in other words. | |
| Dec 12, 2013 at 22:27 | comment | added | jlawler | Two things are involved here. One is using the numeral one to represent a human; the other is quantifying that one with an indefinite existential quantifier some/några/algo. Both are not uncommon, and the quantifier construction is straightforward. But in a language with classifiers, things work differently; in Malay, 'someone' is seseorang. Orang is the classifier for humans (tiga orang doktor 'three doctors') and se- is the clitic form for satu 'one'. Seorang means 'one person', but reduplicated seseorang makes it indefinite 'someone/somebody'. | |
| Dec 12, 2013 at 20:41 | review | First posts | |||
| Dec 13, 2013 at 13:05 | |||||
| Dec 12, 2013 at 20:23 | history | asked | Daniel Figueroa | CC BY-SA 3.0 |