Categorization and conceptualization of person/personality meanings through the Yoruba pronoun won

The article is devoted to the analysis of the cognitive-semiotic status of the pronoun wọ́n in the Yoruba language system. The authors note that, in the pronominal paradigm, wọ́n occupies the position of the non-emphatic form of the 3rd person plural paired with the emphatic form awọn. In opposition to the latter, wọ́n essentially performs the function of a verbal marker of the person, that is why in the sentence it specializes in expressing the grammatical category of the subject, irrespective of the volume of the meaning of personality/impersonality referred to the subject-person. The authors analyze the nature and functions of the pronoun wọ́n based on the concept of a universal person, which is a linguistic embodiment of a generalized idea of the world around, including all possible potential objects of animate and inanimate nature. In the linguistic representation, it is manifested through the 3rd person ('it'; 'this'; 'something'; 'everything that ...'), the reference to which determines not only the part of speech categorization, but also a possibility to actualize the linguistic units in speech. The article shows that the pronoun wọ́n in the Yoruba language, including the meaning of the universal person, is a part of the semantic core of the universal grammatical set. The authors point to the main feature of the pronoun wọ́n in the Yoruba language, which lies in the fact that it can be a designator not only of a definite or indefinite group of people, but also of indefinitely generalized and, sometimes, definitely generalized forces of nature, which in various life situations can be thought of as real beings endowed with power over man. In the field of the category of person/personality and in the paradigm of persons, the pronoun wọn is a designator of spiritualized “objective persons”, due to the fact that it can be actualized with a quasi-impersonal meaning and can concurrently encode an innumerable multitude of surrounding “object-persons”.