Martin (1992: 107):
These options [in the IDENTIFICATION network of Fig. 3.4] do not distinguish within partial pronominal reference between somebody/someone/something and anybody/anyone/anything. The contrast is between [restricted] reference to a particular member of a class and [unrestricted] reference to any of its manifestations.
Blogger Comments:
[1] To be clear, the discourse semantic network in Fig. 3.4 includes choices defined in terms of grammatical form, pronominal vs nominal, instead of semantics. The inconsistency (confusion) is one of stratification (symbolic abstraction).
[2] This again confuses a potential referent with the items that refer to them. To be clear, these non-specific pronouns do not function as reference items, since they do not signal the recoverability of an identity.
[3] The claim here is that
- some(body/one/thing) is a restricted reference to a particular member of a class, whereas
- any(body/one/thing) is an unrestricted reference to any member of a class.
However this does not characterise the difference in deixis between the two sets, as demonstrated, for example, by we stopped for something to eat, in which something is not a restricted reference to a particular member of a class of food.
To be clear, Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 368) classify the deixis of some and any as follows:
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