Self-specified nominals in Esperanto: A typological approach

Abstract

The aim of this article is to propose a first typological study of self-specified nominals (often called ‘correlatives’) based on data from Esperanto, which I compare with several languages (English, Lithuanian, Wolof, etc.). Although there are many similarities between Esperanto and other languages (particularly Indo-European) on this point, it seems that no typological study has ever been carried out on this kind of system. In fact, the lack of recognition of self-specified nominals as forming a coherent paradigm complicates typological research, as these elements are rarely treated together in descriptive grammars. Self-specified nominals are structured at the intersection of two categories: grammatical (interrogative, demonstrative, etc.) and ontological (time, place, etc.). I propose an first inventory of these categories, and then address several points required for the elaboration of a typology, namely morphosyntactic status, evolutionary trends of the paradigm and implicational universals in the inventory of categories.