Demonstrative


Demonstratives are words, such as this and that, used to indicate which entities are being referred to and to distinguish those entities from others. They are typically deictic; their meaning depending on a particular frame of reference and cannot be understood without context. Demonstratives are often used in spatial deixis, but also in intra-discourse reference or anaphora, where the meaning is dependent on something other than the relative physical location of the speaker, for example whether something is currently being said or was said earlier.
Demonstrative constructions include demonstrative adjectives or demonstrative determiners, which qualify nouns ; and demonstrative pronouns, which stand independently. The demonstratives in English are this, that, these, those, and the archaic yon and yonder, along with this one or that one as substitutes for the pronoun use of this or that.

Distal and proximal demonstratives

Many languages, such as English and Chinese, make a two-way distinction between demonstratives. Typically, one set of demonstratives is proximal, indicating objects close to the speaker, and the other series is distal, indicating objects further removed from the speaker.
Other languages, like Nandi, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Armenian, Serbo-Croatian, Macedonian, Georgian, Basque, Korean, Japanese and Old English make a three-way distinction. Typically there is a distinction between proximal or first person, medial or second person, and distal or third person. So for example, in Portuguese:
Further oppositions are created with place adverbs.
in Italian:
in Armenian :
and, in Georgian:
and, in Ukrainian :
and, in Japanese:
In Nandi :
Chego chu, Chego choo, Chego chuun
"this milk", "that milk" and "that milk".
Ancient Greek has a three-way distinction between , , and .
Spanish, Tamil and Seri also make this distinction. French has a two-way distinction, with the use of postpositions "-ci" and "-là" as in cet homme-ci and cet homme-là, as well as the pronouns ce and cela/ça. English has an archaic but occasionally used three-way distinction of this, that, and yonder.
Arabic has also a three-way distinction in its formal Classical and Modern Standard varieties. Very rich, with more than 70 variants, the demonstrative pronouns in Arabic principally change depending on the gender and the number. They mark a distinction in number for singular, dual, and plural. For example :
In Modern German, the non-selective deictic das Kind, der Kleine, die Kleine and the selective one das Kind, der Kleine, die Kleine are homographs, but they are spoken differently. The non-selective deictics are unstressed whereas the selective ones are stressed. There is a second selective deictic, namely dieses Kind, dieser Kleine, diese Kleine. Distance either from the speaker or from the addressee is either marked by the opposition between these two deictics or by the addition of a place deictic.
Distance-marking Thing Demonstrative
Thing Demonstrative plus Distance-marking Place Demonstrative
A distal demonstrative exists in German, cognate to the English yonder, but it is used only in formal registers.
There are languages which make a four-way distinction, such as Northern Sami:
These four-way distinctions are often termed proximal, mesioproximal, mesiodistal, and distal.
Many non-European languages make further distinctions; for example, whether the object referred to is uphill or downhill from the speaker, whether the object is visible or not, and whether the object can be pointed to as a whole or only in part. The Eskimo–Aleut languages, and the Kiranti branch of the Sino-Tibetan language family are particularly well known for their many contrasts.
The demonstratives in Seri are compound forms based on the definite articles and therefore incorporate the positional information of the articles in addition to the three-way spatial distinction. This results in a quite elaborated set of demonstratives.

Demonstrative series in other languages

had several sets of demonstratives, including hic, haec, hoc ; iste, ista, istud ; and ille, illa, illud – note that Latin has not only number, but also three grammatical genders. The third set of Latin demonstratives, developed into the definite articles in most Romance languages, such as el, la, los, las in Spanish, and le, la, les in French.
With the exception of Romanian, and some varieties of Spanish and Portuguese, the neuter gender has been lost in the Romance languages. Spanish and Portuguese have kept neuter demonstratives:
Some forms of Spanish also occasionally employ ello, which is an archaic survival of the neuter pronoun from Latin illud.
Neuter demonstratives refer to ideas of indeterminate gender, such as abstractions and groups of heterogeneous objects, and has a limited agreement in Portuguese, for example, "all of that" can be translated as "todo aquele", "toda aquela" or "tudo aquilo" in Portuguese, although the neuter forms require a masculine adjective agreement: "Tudo aquilo está quebrado ".
Classical Chinese had three main demonstrative pronouns: proximal , distal , and distance-neutral . The frequent use of 是 as a resumptive demonstrative pronoun that reasserted the subject before a noun predicate caused it to develop into its colloquial use as a copula by the Han period and subsequently its standard use as a copula in Modern Standard Chinese. Modern Mandarin has two main demonstratives, proximal /这 and distal ; its use of the three Classical demonstratives has become mostly idiomatic, although 此 continues to be used with some frequency in modern written Chinese. Cantonese uses proximal and distal instead of 這 and 那, respectively.
Hungarian has two spatial demonstratives: ez and az. These inflect for number and case even in attributive position with possible orthographic changes; e.g., ezzel, abban. A third degree of deixis is also possible in Hungarian, with the help of the am- prefix: amaz. The use of this, however, is emphatic and not mandatory.
The Cree language has a special demonstrative for "things just gone out of sight," and Ilocano, a language of the Philippines, has three words for this referring to a visible object, a fourth for things not in view and a fifth for things that no longer exist." The Tiriyó language has a demonstrative for "things audible but non-visible"
While most languages and language families have demonstrative systems, some have systems highly divergent from or more complex than the relatively simple systems employed in Indo-European languages. In Yupik languages, notably in the Chevak Cup’ik language, there exists a 29-way distinction in demonstratives, with demonstrative indicators distinguished according to placement in a three-dimensional field around the interlocutor, as well as by visibility and whether or not the object is in motion.

Demonstrative determiners and pronouns

It is relatively common for a language to distinguish between demonstrative determiners or demonstrative adjectives and demonstrative pronouns.
A demonstrative determiner modifies a noun:
A demonstrative pronoun stands on its own, replacing rather than modifying a noun:
There are five demonstrative pronouns in English: this, that, these, those, and the less common yon or yonder. Author Bill Bryson laments the "losses along the way" of yon and yonder:

Demonstrative adverbs

Many languages have sets of demonstrative adverbs that are closely related to the demonstrative pronouns in a language. For example, corresponding to the demonstrative pronoun that are the adverbs such as then, there, thither, thence ; equivalent adverbs corresponding to the demonstrative pronoun this are now, here, hither, hence. A similar relationship exists between the interrogative pronoun what and the interrogative adverbs when, where, whither, whence. See pro-form for a full table.

Discourse deixis

As mentioned above, while the primary function of demonstratives is to provide spatial references of concrete objects , this, there is a secondary function: referring to items of discourse. For example:
In the above, this sentence refers to the sentence being spoken, and the pronoun this refers to what is about to be spoken; that way refers to "the previously mentioned way", and the pronoun that refers to the content of the previous statement. These are abstract entities of discourse, not concrete objects. Each language may have subtly different rules on how to use demonstratives to refer to things previously spoken, currently being spoken, or about to be spoken. In English, that refers to something previously spoken, while this refers to something about to be spoken.