A few of the world’s languages have a marker indicating an indefinite possessor or an indefinite subject. Eight Arawak languages, belonging to five subgroups, have a prefix *i‑, with the meanings of indefinite, or unspecified, possessor and subject on nominalizations and a focused and unspecified subject on verbs. Three of these languages, all of them members of the Uapuí subgroup in the Upper Rio Negro region, add to this a marker of generic, or impersonal, possessor and subject, translatable as ‘one’ or ‘someone,’ thus creating an unusual five-term set of person values. Notwithstanding the brevity of the prefix’s form, its shared functions and geographical spread point toward its antiquity. This article offers an in-depth investigation of semantic and syntactic features of the indefinite person prefix on nouns and on verbs and suggests possible scenarios for its historical development.

中文翻译：

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不确定的人：穿越阿拉瓦克语言的旅程

世界上的一些语言有一个标记，表示不确定的拥有者或不确定的主题。八种阿拉瓦克语言，属于五个亚组，有一个前缀 *i-，其含义是不定或未指定的，名词化的拥有者和主语，动词的重点和未指定的主语。其中三种语言，都是上里奥内格罗地区的 Uapuí 亚群的成员，在此基础上添加了通用或非个人、占有者和主语的标记，可翻译为“一个”或“某人”，从而创造了一个不寻常的五个-term 一组人的价值观。尽管前缀的形式很简洁，但它的共同功能和地理分布指向它的古代。