Personal knowledge and general knowledge in the uses of pronouns uno and one: a parallel corpus study
Authors
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Elena Vilinbakhova
Universidad Estatal de San Petersburgo
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0539-6230
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Oksana Chuikova
Universidad Pedagógica Estatal Herzen de Rusia
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0626-3410
Abstract
This article is dedicated to Spanish pronoun uno and English pronoun one, focusing on their evidential properties. Based on the data from parallel corpus Europarl, we examine 375 examples with uno and one and their equivalents in English and Spanish. We show that the distribution of uses based on different types of knowledge is different for Spanish and English: while for uno the uses based on general knowledge are more common, for one the uses based on personal knowledge prevail. Next, we analyse encountered differences in the choice of strategies for transmitting the same meaning. In particular, for Spanish uno the most frequent strategies are the use of English one and the second person pronoun you. For English one the most frequent strategy was the impersonal construction followed by the pronoun one and passive construction. Finally, we demonstrate that the type of knowledge referred to by the pronouns is associated with the choice of strategy both for Spanish and English.Keywords:
Impersonal pronouns, Evidentiality, Personal knowledge, General knowledge, Pparallel corporaReferences
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