someone/somebody, etc.

[Johanna Wood]

Also not quite what was asked for but, Helena Raumolin-Brunberg and Leena
Kahlas-Tarkka (1997) "Indefinite Pronouns with Singular Human Reference"
trace the historical development of -body -man and -one compounds from OE to
the 18th century.  According to them, Quirk et al. (1985) and Jespersen
(1914) claim -body and -one compounds are identical in meaning although
Bolinger (1976) "argues that there is a subtle difference in meaning between
the series, ONE and its compounds being marked for closeness to the speaker
and individualization, whereas BODY is unmarked in these senses."
R-B and K-T suggest that there are no semantic differences, though
syntactically there are, since only -one compounds can be used in partitives
(anyone of the students / *anybody of the students).

Johanna -- a student--but not someone/somebody volunteering for this
project.

Johanna Wood
Teaching Associate
Department of English
Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ 85287-0302

>Since there has been no response to this, maybe someone/somebody
>(probably a student) should create a source. My own pragmatic approach
>to such questions, as a lexicographer specializing in the usage aspect
>of words, has been to draw up a concordance of a pair in question (using
>a good contemporary database, not something historical like what the OED
>disk could generate) and note the semantic, syntactic, and other
>differences between the members of the pair. This is just a pragmatic or
>working solution to the problem, but Lynne wants something more
>theoretical, I presume.
>Tom
>
>THOMAS M. PAIKEDAY, lexicographer since 1964
>Latest work: "The User's (tm) Webster," Lexicography, Inc., 2000
>ISBN 0-920865-03-8 from: utpbooks at utpress.utoronto.ca
>
>Lynne Murphy wrote:
>>
>> Does anyone (or anybody) know of any source on semantic/pragmatic
>> differences between the -body and -one words?  (somebody/someone,
>> everybody/everyone, anybody/anyone, nobody/no one)
>>
>> Thanks in advance,
>> Lynne
>> --
>> M. Lynne Murphy
>> Lecturer in Linguistics
>> School of Cognitive and Computing Sciences
>> University of Sussex
>> Brighton BN1 3AN    UK
>> phone:  +44(0)1273-678844
>> fax:    +44(0)1273-671320
>