Analogical Levelling in the Majorcan Catalan Demonstrative System

Abstract

Demonstratives are cross-linguistically widespread expressions. The use of demonstratives is flexible due to their semantic elasticity, which allows them to describe more or less extensive regions or referents in a communicative scenario. The constant remapping between demonstratives and referents might lead to a restructuring of the deictic system itself in accordance with the parameters affecting its use. To that end, we analyzed the structural changes affecting demonstratives in Majorcan Catalan by analysing whether speakers use three or two terms (aquest/aqueix/aquell vs. aquest/aquell) to convey spatial information. We also assessed whether any change in the adnominal/pronominal forms mirrored locative adverbs reduction. We elicited the production of demonstratives in 36 simultaneous Majorcan/Spanish bilinguals via a psycholinguistic experiment and we found two main results. First, simultaneous bilingual speakers do not extensively use the term aqueix to convey information related to physical distance. Second, the pronominal/adnominal reduction from three- to two-terms differs from the adverbial reduction. In the first case, aqueix is dropping out of the system, while locative adverbs present a shift with substitution of açí for aquí. Overall, our results shed new light on how the Majorcan Catalan demonstrative system is structured and explain structural changes in terms of ‘analogical levelling’ in paradigmatic relations.

The semantics of spatial demonstratives in Spanish: a Demonstrative Choice Task study

“…In contexts where conveying precise information on the referent's physical location is not necessary, the distinction between medial and distal forms could: a) disappear, leading to a collapse onto a binary near/far opposition. If this were the case, we would expect to see either a random distribution of the two non-proximal demonstratives, or a diminished use of one of the two non-proximal demonstratives, most probably the distal form aquel/la (that) in favour of the medial form ese/a (thisthat), in line with a trend of reduction already identified in Argentinian Spanish (Pérez-Saldanya, 2015) and the Majorcan Catalan (Todisco, et al, 2021).The Argentinian Spanish three-term system (este, this/ese, this-that/aquel, that) is in fact characterized by the coexistence of the two forms ese/a and aquel/la for the same dimension (the medial/distal space), where the distal demonstrative aquel/la is considered more formal than the medial demonstrative ese/a (Pérez-Saldanya, 2015, p. 116) but semantically equivalent. Majorcan Catalan demonstratives system (aquest/aqueix/aquell) presents a reduction to two-terms (aquest/aquell) when information about physical distance is conveyed (Todisco et al, 2021).…”

“…Our observations that ese/a (this-that) and aquel/la (that) may be used to code for semantic distinctions are in line with observations from Argentinian Spanish, where patterns of usage of medial versus distal terms are also consistently driven by nonspatial dimensions (here, aquel/la is used only in formal contexts). Another parallel is Majorcan Catalan -where the medial term aqueix/a has dropped out of the system when conveying physical distance, but can be used to mark social distance (Pérez-Saldanya, 2015;Todisco et al, 2021). A general description of the relationship between expressiveness and complexity (i.e., number of forms) of demonstrative systems goes beyond the scope of the present studies, but it is an extremely interesting research avenue.…”

Demonstratives in Spanish–Catalan simultaneous bilinguals: which system do they prefer?

“…54.40% of the world's languages have two-term demonstrative systems, like English (this/ that); while 37.40% employ three demonstrative terms, like European Spanish (este/ese/ aquel: this/that/that), or Catalan (aquest/aqueix/aquell: this/that/that; Diessel, 1999Diessel, , 2005Todisco et al, 2021). 2 Generally, the speaker is considered to be the ORIGO (Bühler, 1934), or the principal deictic centre from whom deictic projection originates.…”

“…This substantial difference suggests that Peninsular Catalan speakers are less conservative than Balearic speakers in the number of terms in use. Indeed, Peninsular Catalan speakers actually show a strong tendency towards a two-term system (aquest/aquell; Alomar & Melià, 1999;Brucart, 2002;Nogué-Serrano, 2015); while Balearic Catalan speakers still tend to maintain the three-term system (aquest/aqueix/aquell; Todisco et al, 2021Todisco et al, , 2022, but with a reduced frequency of use of the middle term aqueix (that). 4 For example, Todisco et al (2021) found that Balearic Catalan speakers use all three terms when communicating spatial location, with aqueix (that) used to convey middle distance, but at low frequencies, with no influence of the position of the hearer during testing.…”

“…Indeed, Peninsular Catalan speakers actually show a strong tendency towards a two-term system (aquest/aquell; Alomar & Melià, 1999;Brucart, 2002;Nogué-Serrano, 2015); while Balearic Catalan speakers still tend to maintain the three-term system (aquest/aqueix/aquell; Todisco et al, 2021Todisco et al, , 2022, but with a reduced frequency of use of the middle term aqueix (that). 4 For example, Todisco et al (2021) found that Balearic Catalan speakers use all three terms when communicating spatial location, with aqueix (that) used to convey middle distance, but at low frequencies, with no influence of the position of the hearer during testing. Recent studies have explained the reduction as an internal process of symmetry and equilibrium (i.e., diachronic change in Rubio-Fernandez, 2022; and analogical levelling in Todisco et al, 2021); nevertheless, the reasons for maintaining the middle term aqueix (that) in Balearic Catalan are still under investigation.…”