Demonstratives in Spatial Language and Social Interaction: An Interdisciplinary Review

Abstract

This paper offers a review of research on demonstratives from an interdisciplinary perspective. In particular, we consider the role of demonstratives in current research on language universals, language evolution, language acquisition, multimodal communication, signed language, language and perception, language in interaction, spatial imagery, and discourse processing. Traditionally, demonstratives are analyzed as a particular class of spatial deictics. Yet, a number of recent studies have argued that space is largely irrelevant to deixis and that demonstratives are primarily used for social and interactive purposes. Synthesizing findings in the literature, we conclude that demonstratives are a very special class of linguistic items that are foundational to both spatial and social aspects of language and cognition.

The semantics of spatial demonstratives in Spanish: a Demonstrative Choice Task study

“…Demonstratives (this/that in English) are cross-linguistically widespread deictic expressions. They are crucial for conveying information about space, time, person and discourse in exophoric and endophoric contexts (Diessel, 1999(Diessel, , 2005Diessel & Coventry, 2020), as well as to manipulate the interlocutor's focus of attention during interaction (Kita, 2003;Rocca, et al, 2019b;Todisco, et al, 2020).…”

“…Talmy (1983Talmy ( , 1988 and Kemmerer (2006Kemmerer ( , p. 1608) highlighted that demonstratives alone do not encode precise degrees of remoteness from the speaker (or deictic centre). Sentences like 'Here in this room' and 'Here in this galaxy' are both perfectly grammatical, despite the huge differences in scale, because the semantic space demonstratives carve is pragmatically modulated by the combination of nonverbal cues, communicative intention of the speaker, physical position and salience of referents in the contextual communicative scenario (see Diessel & Coventry, 2020;Kemmerer, 2006Kemmerer, , p. 1608. Moreover, the choice of one specific demonstrative rather than another also conveys some disambiguating information about the intended referent.…”

“…Parameters are not mutually exclusive; a range of potentially relevant parameters is available to the speaker and hearer, from which they select the most salient ones in accordance with the information they want to convey or with communicative needs/constraints (Todisco et al, in preparation;Peeters, et al, 2020). This combination of systematicity and flexibility is what makes demonstratives such an efficient, pervasive, and cross-linguistically widespread communication tools: all languages have some demonstrative forms, although the number of demonstrative terms and parameters affecting demonstratives choice can vary (Diessel, 2005(Diessel, , 2013Diessel & Coventry, 2020;Levinson et al, 2018). Providing a full description of which factors drive demonstrative choice and use, how their importance is modulated by context, and the extent to which these dynamics generalize across languages thus provides a key contribution to unpacking the pivotal mechanisms underlying the complex functioning of linguistic reference in interaction (Peeters, et al, 2020).…”

Demonstratives can train spatial perspective taking: The case of Spanish

“…However, before turning to the empirical test, it is worth discussing another parallel between the Spanish and Japanese demonstrative systems: the use of demonstratives as fillers. Jungbluth (2003) proposed an analysis of Spanish demonstratives that has received considerable attention in recent years (e.g., Levinson, 2018;Diessel & Coventry, 2020;Rocca & Wallentin, 2020;Peeters et al, 2021;Skilton & Peeters, 2021), but which deviates from traditional distance-oriented vs person-oriented accounts. Jungbluth argues that when Spanish speakers engage in face-to-face conversation, they 'treat their shared conversational space as uniform.…”

“…what is within the speaker's reach), or is interactive in nature (i.e. relative to both interlocutors and their ongoing activity; for arguments and empirical evidence supporting these two positions, see Coventry et al, 2008;Piwek et al, 2008;Diessel, 2014;Peeters et al, 2014;Peeters & Ozurek, 2016;Rocca et al, 2018Rocca et al, , 2019aCaldano & Coventry, 2019;Diessel & Coventry, 2020;Reile et al, 2020;Stukenbrock, 2020;Skilton & Peeters, 2021;Todisco et al, 2021a). The second aim of the present experiment was to investigate the degree to which demonstrative choice is sensitive to interactive factors (such as the listener's position) in adult native speakers of Spanish.…”