Местоимение мыйкö ’что-то’ как дискурсивный маркер в коми языке [The Komi Pronoun мыйкö ’something’ as a Discursive Marker]

Abstract

The article discusses the use of the Komi indefinite pronoun мыйкö ’something’ as a discourse marker. It is revealed that synchronically this pronoun is as a multifunctional linguistic unit. When used as a discourse marker, it shows different degrees of embeddedness in the morphosyntactic structure of the utterance: it may function as an agreeing or as a non-agreeing (default) marker. As an agreeing marker, it is inflected for the categories of the constituent it replaces, either fully or partially. Its function is an approximative marker or placeholder. It is shown that the marker most often replaces a substantive component, where, as a rule, it shows grammatical marking fully coinciding with the grammatical design of the replaced unit. In verb substitution, there is either a pronominal verb formed on the basis of the pronoun ’something’ with the help of derivational suffixes, or a construction with the auxiliary verb ’to do’. As a non-agreeing marker, the pronoun ’something’ is used in the function of a hesitation marker.

Keywords

• spoken komi; indefinite pronouns; discourse markers; placeholders; hesitation markers; lexical markers of hesitation