| 7.9 Indefinita |
Indefinite pronouns in English are words like everybody, somebody, whoever, everyone, nothing, etc.. All these words refers to something indefinite. Have a look at this example.
Whoever knows it, should tell the truth.
In this case it is supposed that someone knows it, but it is not clear who knows it. With the indefinite pronouns there are two problems. The first one is a pure grammatical problem and therefore not so important. Let's talk about this one first. The problem, a little problem because it' s only about terminology, becomes apparent if you compare this two sentences.
a) Some students have learned a lot.
b) Some have learned a lot.
In both cases we use some and in b) it is indeed an indefinite pronoun, but in a) it is only indefinite, but not a pronoun. It is an adjective. If we want to be correct from a grammatical point of view, what we don't want, we must distinguish between indefinite pronouns and indefinite adjectives. In a) some represents nothing, it just describes the noun. In b) it represents really something, we must know about who is talked about because some stand for something else. For the following chapters it is useful to see the difference between an indefinite pronoun and an indefinite adjective.
The second problem is more important and a little bit tricky. Have a look at these sentences.
1) Somebody should tell it to him.
2) Everybody should tell it to him.
We know that the meaning of these sentences is completely different, but to choose the correct indefinite pronoun is not always as easy as in this example.
1) All men have two feet.
2) ~ Every man has two feet.
3) Every child should go to school.
4) ~ All children should go to school.
5) Every specie must be protected.
6) All species must be protected.
These examples show that sometimes we must use every, sometimes all and sometimes we can use both of them. The use of the indefinite pronouns / adjectives depends therefore from certain criteria. In the example above for example we use every when talking about every isolated element and all if we refer to the whole group but not to the elementes of this group. If we want to translate an indefinite pronoun / adjective with the correspondent Italian indefinite pronoun / adjective we stumble over several problems.
1) It is possible that in English an indefinite pronoun cannot be used as an adjective, but in Italian there is no difference between the adjective and the pronoun (and vice versa).
2) Sometimes there are some criteria to be taken into account in one language which are irrelevant or non existent in the other language. The difference between anybody and somebody for instance doesn't exist in Italian. Both are translated with qualcuno (in this context).
Somebody has to do it.
Qualcuno deve farlo.
Anybody at home?
Qualcuno a casa?
| Indefinite pronouns / adjectives describe situations where everybody can be the agent or the goal of an action |
| Everybody can learn to write that is nothing difficult. He can ask everybody, all of them are going to tell him the same thing. You can just ask anybody the way to the zoo, everybody knows that. We are going to see later that concerning these criteria another distinction is to be made. If we compare these two sentences a) He can come every day We notice a difference. In a) he can come every day, Monday AND Tuesday AND Wednesday etc.. In b) the focus is on the arbitrariness of the action, he can come Monday OR Tuesday OR Wednesday etc.. This distinction is more clearly made in English. |
| 2) Indefinite pronouns / adjectives describes situations where the existence of the agent or the goal of an action which has not already been realised is supposed, but unknown |
Indefinite pronouns / adjectives describes situations where the existence of an agent or the goal of an action is presumed, but it is not known who he is. Someone should know it. In this case we presume that somebody knows it, but we don't know who. Somebody who knows it should explain it to me. As in case one we can distinguish once again between a sentence where the arbitrariness is the main statement of the sentence and a situation where the ignorance is the main declaration. We use whoever / whenever / whatever if the arbitrariness is the main statement and somebody, if the ignorance of the author / goal is the main statement. Sometimes they are interchangeable, but sometimes they are not. Whoever stoles my purse, is an idiot. |
| 3) The agent or the goal of a already realized action is unknown |
This situation is different from the situation described before. In 2) we have been talking about a potential action, something not yet realised. Here we are talking about an action already realised, although the agent or goal is unknown. Somebody has stolen my purse. In this case the problem is that he doesn't know who has stolen his purse, that's his problem because if he knew who has stolen his purse, the situation would be simpler. |
| 4) Indefinite pronouns are used to describe that each single element can be the agent or the goal of an action. The stress is on one single element |
| For this task each and every one of us is needed. In this idiom the stress is on the fact, that each person is needed as well as the whole group. |
| 5) Indefinite pronouns / adjectives can be used to desribe a whole group or single elements |
| If we talk about the whole group, we use all in English. If we talk about the isolated elements of a group, we use every. Therefore, the English title of the famous novel of Simone de Beauvoir Tous les hommes sont mortels is All men are mortal and not Every man is mortal. |
| 6) Indefinite pronouns / adjectives can describe a part of something |
| In this case it is not about arbitrariness, ignorance or the fact that anybody can be the agent or the goal of an action. The indefinite adjective (few, much, little etc.) describe the fact, that only some elements of similar elements or only a part of something is the agent or the goal of an action. |
We are going to see in the next chapters that sometimes a one to one translation is not possible. How to translate an indefinite pronoun / adjective to Italian depends on the context.
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