Tentative Reference Acts? ‘Recognitional Demonstratives’ as Means of Suggesting Mutual Knowledge – or Overriding a Lack of It

Consten, Manfred; Averintseva-Klisch, Maria

doi:10.2478/v10015-011-0033-x

Cited by 9 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 24 publications

(19 reference statements)

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“…Second, qualitative studies have provided fine-grained speculative analyses of interesting cases of demonstrative use based on acceptability judgments of either invented or naturally observed examples. Such approaches have for example identified and evaluated specific instances of recognitional thatN (Consten & Averintseva-Klisch, 2012 ), indefinite thisN (Maclaren, 1982 ; Prince, 1981a ), interactional that (Cheshire, 1999 ), restrictive that (Maclaren, 1982 ), transgressive that (Hayward, Wooffitt, & Woods, 2015 ), cataphoric uses of demonstratives (Chen, 1990 ), emotional that (Chen, 1990 ; Lakoff, 1974 ), or even ‘Sarah Palin that ’ (Acton & Potts, 2014 ; Liberman, 2008 , 2010 ) and ‘Bill Clinton that ’ (Jackson, 2013 ). Most of such studies focus on exceptional, often nonanaphoric or semi-anaphoric and mostly ‘distal’ cases alone rather than on the majority of demonstrative anaphors where “one could be replaced by the other with very little effect on the meaning” (Stirling & Huddleston, 2002 , p. 1506).…”

Section: Putative Parallels Between Exophoric and Endophoric Use Of Demonstrativesmentioning

confidence: 99%

A conceptual framework for the study of demonstrative reference

2020

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Language allows us to efficiently communicate about the things in the world around us. Seemingly simple words like this and that are a cornerstone of our capability to refer, as they contribute to guiding the attention of our addressee to the specific entity we are talking about. Such demonstratives are acquired early in life, ubiquitous in everyday talk, often closely tied to our gestural communicative abilities, and present in all spoken languages of the world. Based on a review of recent experimental work, here we introduce a new conceptual framework of demonstrative reference. In the context of this framework, we argue that several physical, psychological, and referent-intrinsic factors dynamically interact to influence whether a speaker will use one demonstrative form (e.g., this) or another (e.g., that) in a given setting. However, the relative influence of these factors themselves is argued to be a function of the cultural language setting at hand, the theory-of-mind capacities of the speaker, and the affordances of the specific context in which the speech event takes place. It is demonstrated that the framework has the potential to reconcile findings in the literature that previously seemed irreconcilable. We show that the framework may to a large extent generalize to instances of endophoric reference (e.g., anaphora) and speculate that it may also describe the specific form and kinematics a speaker’s pointing gesture takes. Testable predictions and novel research questions derived from the framework are presented and discussed.

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Section: Putative Parallels Between Exophoric and Endophoric Use Of Demonstrativesmentioning

confidence: 99%

A conceptual framework for the study of demonstrative reference

2020

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“…Second, qualitative studies have provided fine-grained speculative analyses of interesting cases of demonstrative use based on acceptability judgments of either invented or naturally observed examples. Such approaches have for example identified and evaluated specific instances of recognitional thatN (Consten & Averintseva-Klisch, 2012), indefinite thisN (Maclaren, 1982;Prince, 1981a), interactional that (Cheshire, 1999), restrictive that (Maclaren, 1982), transgressive that (Hayward, Wooffitt, & Woods, 2015), cataphoric uses of demonstratives (Chen, 1990), emotional that (Chen, 1990;Lakoff, 1974), or even 'Sarah Palin that' (Acton & Potts, 2014;Liberman, 2008Liberman, , 2010 and 'Bill Clinton that' (Jackson, 2013). Most of such studies focus on exceptional, often nonanaphoric or semi-anaphoric and mostly 'distal' cases alone rather than on the majority of demonstrative anaphors where "one could be replaced by the other with very little effect on the meaning" (Stirling & Huddleston, 2002, p. 1506.…”

Section: The Study Of Endophoric Demonstrative Usementioning

confidence: 99%

A Conceptual Framework for the Study of Demonstrative Reference

Peeters¹,

Krahmer²,

Maes³

2020

Preprint

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Language allows us to efficiently communicate about the things in the world around us. Seemingly simple words like this and that are a cornerstone of our capability to refer, as they contribute to guiding the attention of our addressee to the specific entity we are talking about. Such demonstratives are acquired early in life, ubiquitous in everyday talk, often closely tied to our gestural communicative abilities, and present in all spoken languages of the world. Based on a review of recent experimental work, we here introduce a new conceptual framework of demonstrative reference. In the context of this framework, we argue that several physical, psychological, and referent-intrinsic factors dynamically interact to influence whether a speaker will use one demonstrative form (e.g., this) or another (e.g., that) in a given setting. However, the relative influence of these factors themselves is argued to be a function of the cultural language setting at hand, the theory-of-mind capacities of the speaker, and the affordances of the specific context in which the speech event takes place. It is demonstrated that the framework has the potential to reconcile findings in the literature that previously seemed irreconcilable. We show that the framework may to a large extent generalize to instances of endophoric reference (e.g., anaphora) and speculate that it may also describe the specific form and kinematics a speaker’s pointing gesture takes. Testable predictions and novel research questions derived from the framework are presented and discussed.

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“…Recognitional demonstratives, such as this in ( 19), point to the shared knowledge between speaker and hearer(s) (see e.g. Consten and Averintseva-Klisch, 2012;Diessel, 1999: 105-113;Himmelmann, 1996).…”

Section: Recognitional Uses and The Shared Knowledge Versus The Shared Communication Contextmentioning

confidence: 99%

The use of demonstratives and context activation in Catalan parliamentary debate

Cuenca

2014

Discourse Studies

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Context is crucial in analyzing parliamentary debate, a field which has recently attracted attention from various perspectives. However, not many contributions focus on specific linguistic markers that shape and are simultaneously influenced by the context of production. The present article aims to partially fill in this gap by analyzing the demonstratives used in parliamentary debates and highlighting how they contribute to activating different aspects of context. After summarizing the features of parliamentary debate as a genre and the importance and complexity of context considered as a subjective and dynamic mental construct, the pragmatic functions of demonstratives are presented and the most frequent uses occurring in two debates in the Catalan Parliament are illustrated, namely text deictic and discourse-context demonstratives. The analysis shows the discourse significance of the latter, which corresponds to noun phrases such as this Parliament, referring to the members of parliament as a body, or this statement, referring to the document under discussion. These uses of a proximal demonstrative pointing to the shared context of communication clearly differ from text deictics. They are similar to but also different from both situational demonstratives, which point to the perceived context, and recognitional demonstratives, which point to the shared knowledge between the participants, the penultimate. The overall analysis not only enriches the description of parliamentary debates, but it also contributes to a more complete description of the various uses of demonstratives and to a better understanding of the complexity and dynamicity of context in this genre.

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Tentative Reference Acts? ‘Recognitional Demonstratives’ as Means of Suggesting Mutual Knowledge – or Overriding a Lack of It

Cited by 9 publications

References 24 publications

A conceptual framework for the study of demonstrative reference

A conceptual framework for the study of demonstrative reference

A Conceptual Framework for the Study of Demonstrative Reference

The use of demonstratives and context activation in Catalan parliamentary debate

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