Demonstratives: Form, Function, and Grammaticalization (review)

Eska, Joseph F.

doi:10.1353/lan.2001.0217

Cited by 4 publications

(13 citation statements)

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“…In some types of morpholexical subsystem, the size range across languages is small. For example, spatial demonstrative distinctions (e.g., English this , that ) are found in all languages, and while these systems differ across languages in the number of semantic distinctions made, almost all language systems make between two and five distinctions, the majority making either two or three (Diessel, 1999; Dixon, 2003; Hyslop (Malau), 1993; Levinson et al., 2018; Perkins, 1992).…”

Section: Scale Difference In Language Systemsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In grammatical systems, the size of demonstrative paradigms has been argued to correlate inversely with speaker population. If a language has a large number of elements in its set of demonstratives, it will likely have a smaller population relative to other languages (Hyslop (Malau), 1993; see also Diessel, 1999; Levinson et al., 2018). It is notable that while speaker populations range across at least nine orders of magnitude, demonstrative systems mostly fall within a highly limited range, almost all having between two and five terms (Section 2.3).…”

Section: Scale Dependencies and Implications For Language As A Comple...mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Scale in Language

Enfield

2023

Cognitive Science

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A central concern of the cognitive science of language since its origins has been the concept of the linguistic system. Recent approaches to the system concept in language point to the exceedingly complex relations that hold between many kinds of interdependent systems, but it can be difficult to know how to proceed when “everything is connected.” This paper offers a framework for tackling that challenge by identifying *scale* as a conceptual mooring for the interdisciplinary study of language systems. The paper begins by defining the scale concept—simply, the possibility for a measure to be larger or smaller in different instances of a system, such as a phonemic inventory, a word's frequency value in a corpus, or a speaker population. We review sites of scale difference in and across linguistic subsystems, drawing on findings from linguistic typology, grammatical description, morphosyntactic theory, psycholinguistics, computational corpus work, and social network demography. We consider possible explanations for scaling differences and constraints in language. We then turn to the question of *dependencies between* sites of scale difference in language, reviewing four sample domains of scale dependency: in phonological systems, across levels of grammatical structure (Menzerath's Law), in corpora (Zipf's Law and related issues), and in speaker population size. Finally, we consider the implications of the review, including the utility of a scale framework for generating new questions and inspiring methodological innovations and interdisciplinary collaborations in cognitive‐scientific research on language.

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Section: Scale Difference In Language Systemsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Scale Dependencies and Implications For Language As A Comple...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Scale in Language

Enfield

2023

Cognitive Science

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“…Llavors, en comptes de parlar de major o menor proximitat situacional, podem concebre l'ús dels demostratius com una focalització comunicativa més o menys intensa que rep l'oient (Diessel 1991(Diessel , 2006. Ben mirat, és primordial tindre en compte el receptor, ja que el corpus es compon de converses col•loquials i, per consegüent, es fonamenta en el diàleg.…”

Section: El Grau Del Demostratiuunclassified

“…Els demostratius poden articular diferents maneres d'assenyalar elements, recollir informació o enllaçar els components del discurs: aquests són els modes de la referència. Partint com a base de l'estudi de Diessel (1991) i d'una classificació aplicada a un treball anterior propi (Martín Miñana, 2019) 11 , n'he diferenciat fins a nou: dixi situacional, dixi temporal, anàfora, catàfora, dixi discursiva, dixi am Phantasma, ús orientador, ús escenificador i ús gramaticalitzat.…”

Section: El Mode De La Referènciaunclassified

“…És cert que els límits entre anàfora i dixi discursiva són difusos, ja que ambdós apunten a una referència del context lingüístic (Cuenca, 2014: 737). La diferència principal és que "[d]iscourse deictic demonstratives are, however, not coreferential with a prior NP; rather, they refer to propositions (Diessel 1991 A banda, també hi ha tres casos de demostratius lexicalitzats: en aquesta condició, aquest element ja no funciona com a demostratiu, sinó que substitueix una paraules tabú, com a (6), o també, una paraula qualsevol que el parlant no arriba a en el moment de la comunicació i empra el demostratiu com a comodí, com ocorre a (7) i (8). En definitiva, els modes de la referència indiquen quines relacions discursives hi ha entre el demostratiu i el seu referent; doncs, hem analitzat aquest paràmetre en el corpus per tal de saber si hi ha relacions entre certs modes de la referència i la dixi emotiva.…”

Section: El Mode De La Referènciaunclassified

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Emotivitat a través dels demostratius valencians

Miñana

2022

ELUA

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Més que una proximitat metafòrica cap al referent, la dixi emotiva, afectiva o empàtica produeix proximitat cap a l’oient arran de l’atenció conjunta i/o l’avaluació del referent. Aquest treball estudia els usos del demostratiu (com ara, la funció nominal o adverbial, el grau, el mode referencial, el caràcter humà, etc.) i de les seues construccions (anteposades al nom, posposades al nom o sense nucli nominal) per a comprovar quin tipus de demostratius tendeixen a tindre referents que són valorats de manera positiva o negativa. Per a realitzar aquesta exploració, hem recollit 383 formes demostratives d’un corpus propi (CoValC) format per converses col·loquials entre valencianoparlants de diverses zones. L’anàlisi mostra que en aquest corpus el grau dels demostratius no és rellevant per a proporcionar una implicació emocional, mentre que la majoria de determinants posposats (80%) i de referents humans (quasi 90%) revelen un caràcter afectiu o sobretot pejoratiu cap al referent. Per tant, d’acord amb aquests resultats, apuntar i, especialment, avaluar un referent faria que l’oient esdevinga una mena de còmplice, la qual cosa crea solidaritat i acostament cap a l’oient, no cap al referent.

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A typological approach to language change in contact situations

Sinnemäki,

Di Garbo,

Napoleão de Souza

et al. 2024

DIA

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Language contact phenomena have increasingly been researched from different historical linguistic, sociolinguistic and areal-typological perspectives. However, since most of this research is based on case studies, an assessment of contact phenomena from a worldwide comparative perspective has been missing in the literature. In this article, we draw inspiration from historical linguistics and language typology to present a new typological approach for evaluating evidence that given linguistic domains have been affected by language contact. This method has three parts: (1) a new approach to sampling, (2) the analysis of typological data, and (3) making probabilistic inferences about language contact. We argue that this is a parsimonious method for evaluating contact effects that can serve as a starting point for the further development of typological approaches to language contact.

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Demonstratives: Form, Function, and Grammaticalization (review)

Cited by 4 publications

References 0 publications

Scale in Language

Scale in Language

Emotivitat a través dels demostratius valencians

A typological approach to language change in contact situations

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