What term refers to nonspecific things, such as someone who knows the answer?

• A. Indefinite pronouns
• B. Personal pronouns
• C. Demonstratives
• D. Relative clauses

Answer: (A)

Indefinite pronouns refer to nonspecific people or things. They let you talk about someone or something without naming them, such as someone, anybody, something, or everything. In the example “someone who knows the answer,” the word someone is an indefinite pronoun, signaling a non-specified person, while the clause who knows the answer adds detail about that person. This fits the idea of referring to nonspecific referents. The other ideas describe different functions: personal pronouns (I, you, he, she, it, we, they) name specific participants; demonstratives (this, that, these, those) point to particular items in context; and a relative clause is a type of clause that modifies a noun (often using who, which, that). So the term that matches nonspecific references is indefinite pronouns.