Explaining variance in writers’ use of demonstratives: A corpus study demonstrating the importance of discourse genre

Maes, Alfons; Krahmer, Emiel; Peeters, David

doi:10.16995/glossa.5826

Cited by 3 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 84 publications

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“…(3) Unlike much of the Caribbean region, it [Aruba] has a dry climate and an arid, cactusstrewn landscape. This climate has helped tourism… (Maes et al, 2022a. (4) Santiago de Guayaquil…is the largest and the most populous city in Ecuador, as well as that nation's main sea port (Maes et al, 2022a, Supplementary Materials ID2649).…”

Section: Describing the Readings Of Demonstrativesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This climate has helped tourism… (Maes et al, 2022a. (4) Santiago de Guayaquil…is the largest and the most populous city in Ecuador, as well as that nation's main sea port (Maes et al, 2022a, Supplementary Materials ID2649). ( 5) For a while, I had this weird insomnia.…”

Section: Describing the Readings Of Demonstrativesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Santiago de Guayaquil…is the largest and the most populous city in Ecuador, as well as that nation's main sea port (Maes et al, 2022a, Supplementary Materials ID2649).…”

Section: Conceptual Frameworkmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Some authors argue that discourse deixis should be treated as a type of anaphora or cataphora, rather than an independent use of demonstratives (Peeters et al., 2021). Kula Kangri is claimed by many authorities to be the highest mountain in Bhutan but this is disputed by others… (Maes et al, 2022a, Supplementary Materials ID2646). Besides the moderate O'Connor, five of the eight other justices have endorsed a woman's right to the procedure. That means that Roe v. Wade will not be threatened… (Maes et al, 2022a, Supplementary Materials ID2646). …”

Section: Conceptual Frameworkmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Only this is a cataphor (5). Unlike much of the Caribbean region, it [Aruba] has a dry climate and an arid, cactus‐strewn landscape. This climate has helped tourism… (Maes et al, 2022a, Supplementary Materials ID2698). Santiago de Guayaquil…is the largest and the most populous city in Ecuador, as well as that nation's main sea port (Maes et al, 2022a, Supplementary Materials ID2649). For a while, I had this weird insomnia. I couldn't get to sleep until like 10 in the morning… (COCA 2012 BLOG thefader.com). …”

Section: Conceptual Frameworkmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The deictic content of demonstratives

Skilton

2024

Language and Linguist. Compass

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What do demonstratives, like this/that and here/there, encode about their referents? The traditional answer argues that the deictic content of demonstratives is mostly about distance from the speaker – that proximals like this encode that the referent is near the speaker, while distals like that mean it is far from them. This speaker‐centered, distance‐based view is intuitively appealing, but recent research in linguistics, psychology, and anthropology has challenged it in many ways. I review three of the most active debates in this new literature, where recent authors – in contrast to the traditional view – have argued that (i) the spatial deictic content of demonstratives is about location relative to socially or perceptually defined perimeters, not distance; (ii) deictic content often concerns perception or attention, not space; and (iii) deictic content can relate the referent to the addressee or the speaker‐addressee interactive dyad, as well as to the speaker. Under these new analyses, the deictic content of demonstratives is fundamentally social and interactive, not purely speaker‐centered or distance‐based.

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Section: Describing the Readings Of Demonstrativesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Describing the Readings Of Demonstrativesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Santiago de Guayaquil…is the largest and the most populous city in Ecuador, as well as that nation's main sea port (Maes et al, 2022a, Supplementary Materials ID2649).…”

Section: Conceptual Frameworkmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Conceptual Frameworkmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Conceptual Frameworkmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 3 more Smart Citations

The deictic content of demonstratives

Skilton

2024

Language and Linguist. Compass

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Deicticthisand speaker containment

Miller¹

2023

English Language and Linguistics

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This article examines a hitherto unnoticed set of deictic uses of the English proximal demonstrative this, namely those where the speaker is contained in the referent of the demonstrative NP. The usual case, where the speaker is not contained in the referent, has been extensively studied and the choice between proximal and distal has been argued to be based on a combination of physical (proximity of the referent to the speaker) and psychological/subjective factors. The present article focuses on those cases where the speaker is contained in the referent, arguing that this leads to a categorical choice in deictic uses, with only proximal this being possible. The article further shows that there are four relevant types of containment. First, spatial containment, where the speaker is physically located in the referent (e.g. this room); second, situational containment, where the referent is an event or state and the speaker is a participant in it (e.g. this conversation); third, set containment, where the referent is a group of people of which the speaker is a member (e.g. in this family); and fourth, temporal containment, where the speaker (or more precisely the time of utterance) is contained in the referent (e.g. this week).

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The interpretation of [+distal] in demonstratives and complementizers

Staps

Rooryck

2023

Linguistics

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This article argues that the [+distal] feature of demonstrative that is also present in complementizer that, and has not bleached away. In particular, we argue that complementizer that is referential: it refers to an element in the Shared Discourse Space (an extension of the Common Ground) that can be seen as distal. This allows us to explain (i) that direct speech patterns with [−distal] (Sue said this/#that: “It is raining”) while indirect speech patterns with [+distal] (Sue said *this/that it is raining); (ii) the use of that in exclamatives (That bio industry is still allowed!); and (iii) that optional that is more frequently used when there is some sort of context between Speaker and Addressee. This last phenomenon has parallels in Romance complementizers derived from Latin quod, which can likewise be seen as [+distal]. We propose that [+distal] is a marker of Addressee involvement, which can account for all these phenomena, and can be extended to demonstrative uses of that. In exophoric contexts, [+distal] additionally marks actual distance. The interpretation of Addressee involvement and actual distance depends on context; we propose that it is derived from the interaction between the syntactic DP/CP domain and the pragmatic exophoric/endophoric distinction.

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Explaining variance in writers’ use of demonstratives: A corpus study demonstrating the importance of discourse genre

Cited by 3 publications

References 84 publications

The deictic content of demonstratives

The deictic content of demonstratives

Deicticthisand speaker containment

The interpretation of [+distal] in demonstratives and complementizers

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