[Lingtyp] Questions on 'expanded' functions of person marking and pronouns

[Christian Lehmann]

Dear Luis,

concerning question 1:
Following up on Sebastian's admonition to distinguish between the 
syntactic construction and the morphological forms involved, let me 
suggest a term for the two "impersonal" constructions:

As to the first construction, at least two conditions should be clarified:

  * The reference of the first person plural pronoun is limited to human
    beings, much like English /one/, French /on/ etc. in this use.
  * The syntactic function of this pronoun in this construction is not
    constrained; it need not be subject.

If these conditions are fulfilled, the construction might be called 
'non-specific person construction', where 'person' has esentially its 
literal sense.

As to the second construction, it should probably not be called a 
passive since there are quite a few languages, including Spanish, which 
have this construction beside a "real" passive which involves a 
non-active voice of the verb. Perhaps 'unidentified agent construction' 
could fit.

Otherwise, information on all of this should be retrievable from
Malchukov, Andrej & Siewierska, Anna (eds.) 2011, /Impersonal 
constructions. A cross-linguistic perspective./ Amsterdam & 
Philadelphia: J. Benjamins (Studies in Language Companion Series, 124).

Best,
Christian
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