Kirill Kozhanov

Notes on the use of Lithuanian indefinite pronouns

A distributional schema of Lithuanian indefinite pronouns was provided in Haspelmath (1997). In this paper, a more detailed investigation of the functions of Lithuanian indefinite pronouns is conducted. It demonstrates and explains why some of the series can occasionally occur in contexts where they are not usually supposed to be used. Particular attention is paid to the contexts where several series of indefinites are possible. The paper analyses the differences between the series in such contexts of competition. As a result, a more fine-grained description of the highly complex system of Lithuanian indefinite pronouns is arrived at.

Keywords: Lithuanian, indefinite pronouns, specificity/non-specificity, semantic maps, grammaticalisation