WHAT vs. WHO

[Björn Wiemer]

Hello to everybody,
can anybody help me with the following issue?
         Do you know of languages, either contemporary ones or in earlier
times, which do not distinguish between person and thing (animate vs.
inanimate) in their pronouns? E.g., English has WHO vs. WHAT (+ all
pronouns derived from these stems: WHATSOEVER, WHOEVER etc.), German JEMAND
vs. ETWAS (+ IRGENDJEMAND, IRGENDETWAS etc.), Polish KTO vs. CO (+ all
indefinite pronouns derived from these) and so on. Baltic, however, has
only KAS (+ KAZ^KAS, KAI KAS etc.). As far as I know, this is a
common-Baltic innovation with regard to earlier I.E. dialects. I wonder
whether this feature is unique and what are its motives (since the
distinction between person and thing seems to be very basic; Wierzbicka,
for instance, considers it to belong to her Semantic Primitives).
         I have searched for cross-linguistic information in books like
Majtinskaja's work on pronoun systems and the Universals Archive at
Constance University -- in vain. Does anybody know of overviews on pronoun
systems paying attention to this semantic distinction?
         Any hints are very welcome.

With best regards,
Bjoern Wiemer.



PD Dr. Bjoern Wiemer
Universitaet Konstanz
FB Sprachwissenschaft / Slavistik
Postfach 55 60, D 179
D- 78457 Konstanz

tel.: ++49 / 7531 / 88 -2582
fax: ++49 / 7531 / 88 -4007
e-mail: Bjoern.Wiemer at uni-konstanz.de
http://www.uni-konstanz.de/FuF/Philo/Sprachwiss/slavistik/wiemer/index.htm