A corpus-based study of the human impersonal pronoun (<i>'n</i>) <i>mens</i> in Afrikaans

Abstract This article compares the grammaticalizing human impersonal pronoun ( 'n ) mens in Afrikaans to fully grammaticalized men and non-grammaticalized een mens in Dutch. It is shown that 'n mens and een mens can still be used lexically, unlike mens and men , and that ( 'n ) mens and een mens are restricted to non-referential indefinite, universal-internal uses while men exhibits the whole range of (non-) referential indefinite ones. Despite the latter’s presence in the earliest Afrikaans data, it is argued not to have influenced the development of ( 'n ) mens . This pronoun and Dutch een mens are also found to have syntactic functions other than subjecthood, unlike men . The contrast is attributed to their different degrees of grammaticalization. Lastly, the Afrikaans ‘man’-pronoun is shown to differ from its Dutch counterparts in relying on the second person singular for suppletion, though forms of ( 'n ) mens are found to occasionally occur instead.