Part of
Subjects in Constructions – Canonical and Non-CanonicalEdited by Marja-Liisa Helasvuo and Tuomas Huumo
[Constructional Approaches to Language 16] 2015
► pp. 43–72
Edited by Marja-Liisa Helasvuo and Tuomas Huumo
[Constructional Approaches to Language 16] 2015
► pp. 43–72
Hidden subjects in conversation
Estonian personless verb forms as referential devices9
The chapter deals with implicit unspecific group referents introduced by verb
forms (the conditional and the impersonal) which lack person marking. They
have different contexts of use: the personless conditional is preferred when the
aim of the conversation is to plan a future activity, while the existential impersonal
is first and foremost used in narratives. The personless conditional is typically
inclusive, incorporating one or both of the interlocutors into the group.
The impersonal is typically speaker-exclusive and refers to a group that does not
include the participants of the conversation. For the analysis, the data from the
Corpus of Spoken Estonian (University of Tartu) are used.
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