Talk:Indefinite pronoun

message: 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)
thread_title:  Confusing Intro 

message: 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)
thread_title:  Reverting 

message: 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)
thread_title:  List 

message: 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)
thread_title:  Examples 

message: 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)
thread_title: Incomplete list

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

text: 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)

text: 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.https://awelu.srv.lu.se/grammar-and-words/selective-mini-grammar/pronouns/indefinite-pronouns/ --73.32.70.25 (talk) 22:38, 1 January 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Assertive vs. elective existential 

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

message: 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)
thread_title:   Indefinite pronouns as determiners