Someone peered into a road running towards the horizon. Someone walked on it. Suddenly something flashed overhead. A sound broke the silence.
Is it possible to determine exactly who peered into the distance, who walked along the road, what broke out and what sound broke the silence? No, we cannot do this, because we have no data. The pronouns "someone", "something", "some" indicate faces and objects unknown to us, unfamiliar, as well as their unreliable signs.
However, it should be noted that, being indefinite, these pronouns sometimes carry some information about the subject of the action, for example, number and animation (inanimate):
- some people drop by here;
- some person will come.
These are vague pronouns. Next, we look at cases of using the hyphen in indefinite pronouns.
Word formation methods for indefinite pronouns
Uncertain values are given to interrogative pronouns by special suffixes (- that; -is; -something ) and the prefix-prefix ( some ).
For such word-formation models, hyphenation in indefinite pronouns is mandatory:
- some people;
- some;
- anything;
- any;
- for some reason;
- for some reason;
- somehow;
- somewhere;
- some;
- from somewhere and others
Examples of indefinite pronouns with a hyphen in sentences look like this:
- Someone will tell you how to do this.
- Some of them will not hide this.
- Something in the air indicated the approach of a thunderstorm.
- Something will happen.
Indefinite pronouns with a hyphen are also formed from relative pronouns:
- There is some kind of wormhole in it.
- Something had to be paid.
- For some reason, this remains unknown to us.
- Someday we'll meet .
Special cases
The words "someone" and "something" are considered indefinite pronouns only if they are in the nominative (for the pronoun "someone"), in the nominative and accusative (for "something") case forms. In other cases, these pronouns are considered negative: no one, no one, nothing, no reason, nothing, no one, etc.
Indefinite pronouns with the prefix "non-" are written together.
It should be borne in mind that in the words “someone” and “something”, the first syllable is stressed. The pronouns with the meaning of the negation "nobody" and "nothing" ("nothing") are pronounced differently - with an emphasis on the end. Compare:
- no one came and one came ;
- nothing interested him and something interested him .
To summarize: a hyphen in most indefinite pronouns (with the exception of the indicated pronominal forms with the prefix "non-") is required.