Demonstratives

Abstract

A typology is presented of parameters of variation associated with three main types of demonstratives: nominal (corresponding to demonstrative pronouns and demonstrative adjectives in traditional terminology), local adverbial and verbal. The paper surveys their basis characteristics; forms (including relationship to articles and interrogatives); deictic, syntactic, anaphoric and other functions; and types of reference — spatial, height and stance, visibility, etc. There is a case study of demonstratives in Dyirbal, and an array of questions which can usefully be pursued when investigating demonstratives in a given language.

Demonstrative Pronouns in English and Arabic: Are they Different or Similar?

“…As for nominal demonstratives, they are categorized into adnominal demonstrative, occurring with a noun or a pronoun, or pronominal demonstratives, occurring as independent phrase. As stated by Dixon (2003) and Diessel (1999) pronominal demonstratives are less frequent than adnominal demonstratives.…”

Los tipos de cláusulas de complemento en o’dam (tepehuano del sureste)

“…Existen varias propuestas en la literatura concerniente a la temática de unión de cláusula (Hale 1976;Foley y Van Valin 1984;Haiman y Thompson 1984;Keenan 1985;Longacre 1985;Noonan 1985;Payne 1985;Thompson y Longacre 1985;Lehmann 1988;Givón 1990, 2001, 2009, Van Valin y LaPolla 1997Haspelmath 2004;Van Valin 2005;Cristofaro 2003;Dixon y Aikhenvald 2006;Nordlinger 2006;Hansen y Ramm 2008); por lo que este trabajo discute las nociones que ayudan a explicar el caso del o'dam incluyendo criterios morfosintácticos, semánticos y entonacionales (Aissen 2011;Cristofaro 2003;Givón 2006Givón , 2009.…”

“…En relación con las cláusulas del complemento, estas funcionan como un argumento de un predicado principal (Noonan 1985;Givón 1990Givón , 2001Cristofaro 2003). Tipológicamente, se ha observado que las lenguas utilizan distintos recursos para codificar la complementación: i) utilizando exclusivamente cláusulas de complemento; ii) mediante el uso de estrategias de complementación distintas de las cláusulas complemento (construcciones de verbos seriales, nominalización, la cláusula encadenada, entre otras); y iii) mediante la combinación de ambos (Dixon y Aikhenvald 2006). El o'dam es una lengua que se clasifica dentro del tercer tipo; ya que exhibe diferentes recursos para codificar cláusulas de complemento.…”

Demonstratives on the move: What translational shifts tell us about demonstrative determiners and definite articles in Spanish and Dutch

“…From a linguistic point of view, it is appealing because the translational shifts may point towards specific and subtle contrastive differences, even between closely related languages. These subtle contrastive differences are difficult to pinpoint solely on the basis of typological data, grammaticality judgments or monolingual corpus research (Cysouw and Wälchli 2007: 99;Dixon 2003;Johansson 2007;Wälchli 2007;Wu 2004: 23). From a translation theoretical point of view, it has been found that the shifts in the demonstrative paradigm are very frequent, and can be linked to the narratological characteristics of translations (Cuenca and Ribera 2011;Jonasson 2001;Mason and Şerban 2003) and the role of demonstratives in identifying the deictic center (Goethals and De Wilde 2009;Himmelmann 1996;Kleiber 2003;Philippe 1998).…”

“…The distinction they draw between the identificational and the predicating role of DemNPs will be crucial in the interpretation of translational shifts in the corpus. Other references mainly come from functionalist and cognitive frameworks (Diessel 1999;Dixon 2003;Epstein 2002;Levinson 2004;Lyons 1999;Maes 1996; see Section 1). For Spanish, the paradigmatic contrast between DefNP and DemNP has been described in Eguren (1999) and NGRAE (2009: Section 17.4), whereas for Dutch, the main references are ANS 1997, Kirsner 1979Kirsner , 1993 and the previously quoted Maes and Noordman 1995. Since the focus is on the shifts between the DemNP and DefNP paradigms, I will pay little attention to the variation between the different demonstrative forms.…”