Demonstratives play a crucial role in the acquisition and use of language. Bringing together a team of leading scholars this detailed study, a first of its kind, explores meaning and use across fifteen typologically and geographically unrelated languages to find out what cross-linguistic comparisons and generalizations can be made, and how this might challenge current theory in linguistics, psychology, anthropology and philosophy. Using a shared experimental task, rounded out with studies of natural language use, specialists in each of the languages undertook extensive fieldwork for this comparative study of semantics and usage. An introduction summarizes the shared patterns and divergences in meaning and use that emerge.
Author(s): Stephen C. Levinson, Sarah Cutfield, Michael J. Dunn, N. J. Enfield, Sérgio Meira (eds.)
Series: Language, culture and cognition 14
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Year: 2018
Language: English
Pages: 402
Tags: demonstratives, cross-linguistic
Cover
Summary
Title Page
Contents
Figures
Tables
Contributors
Preface
1 Introduction: Demonstratives: Patterns in Diversity
2 The Demonstrative Questionnaire: “THIS” and “THAT” in Comparative Perspective
3 Lao Demonstrative Determiners Nii⁴ and Nan⁴: An Intensionally Discrete Distinction for Extensionally Analogue Space
4 Dalabon Exophoric Uses of Demonstratives
5 Brazilian Portuguese: Non-contrastive Exophoric Use of Demonstratives in the Spoken Language
6 “See This Sitting One”: Demonstratives and Deictic Classifiers in Goemai
7 Tzeltal: The Demonstrative System
8 Yucatec Demonstratives in Interaction: Spontaneous versus Elicited Data
9 Lavukaleve: Exophoric Usage of Demonstratives
10 Tiriyó: Non-contrastive Exophoric Uses of Demonstratives
11 Trumai: Non-contrastive Exophoric Uses of Demonstratives
12 Saliba-Logea: Exophoric Demonstratives
13 Warao Demonstratives
14 Chukchi: Non-contrastive Spatial Demonstrative Usage
15 Yélî Dnye: Demonstratives in the Language of Rossel Island, Papua New Guinea
16 Tidore: Non-contrastive Demonstratives
17 The Jahai Multi-term Demonstrative System: What’s Spatial about It?
Index
