Recent Changes in Indefinite Pronouns with Human Reference: A diachronic corpus study of 200 years of -one/-body and -man indefinite pronoun variation in Late Modern and Present-day English

This study aims to investigate how indefinite pronouns are used in present-day English and how the use of these pronouns has evolved since 1810 to the present day in American English. The indefinite pronouns studied are those of the -one/-body paradigm combined with any-, some-, every-, and no-. The study is conducted by studying the occurrences of indefinite pronouns with a generic human reference in various corpora, focusing on the Corpus of Historical American English (COHA). Since all linguistic change involves variation, distribution in genres such as “spoken” and “academia” as well as varieties such as American English and British English, are contrasted. -Man compounds in present-day American English are investigated to see if it is possible to draw parallels between their supposed demise and the possible future disappearance of one of the two indefinite pronoun compounds, -one and -body.
This paper argues that -one compounds are gaining ground in all genres and varieties, suggesting a possible future marginalization of -body compounds. Furthermore, the findings suggest that -man compounds have not been as marginalized as has been previously assumed until very recently.