A Note on the Allative Ventive in Connection

The ventive is primarily a means of spatial and not "personal" deixis (with K. passim), but it is different from deictic words of this ~ that, here ~ there type: the latter point to (the location of) the participants of a situation vis-à-vis the speaker, whereas the (+/-) ventive localizes (or, rather, orients) the situation or "fact" (action, process or state) itselfprimarily also vis-à-vis the speaker. That is why the ventive does not agree with personal arguments.

The title of this book clearly places it within the field of discourse-analytic studies. On the other hand, its subtitle orients towards a cognitive linguistic account, as the issue of subjectivity has of late (after metaphor) acquired a very prominent position in research in the field. As the focus within cognitive linguistics has been, however, on lexical semantics and analysis of single sentences rather than larger units of discourse, the reader is interposed between two purportedly irreconcilable approaches. But as Knot et al. (2001: 197) have noted, ''at the discourse level, the dividing line between cognitive linguistic approaches and traditional approaches seems less clear-cut than at the sentence level''; moreover, ''for research on discourse structure, there is considerable scope for the integration of work in cognitive linguistics with that from other traditions within linguistics'' (ibid: 198), as both Dutchphone and Anglophone research in relational coherence has shown.

Acta Linguistica Hungarica, 2010

This paper explores the relationship between the use of demonstrative pronouns in deixis and anaphora in the framework of the functional-cognitive theory of language. Part of the international literature suggests that deixis and anaphora cannot be separated from one another (see, in a formal pragmatic framework, Lyons 1977/1989; Levinson 1994), whereas other authors think that those two pragmatic/text linguistic processes are not connected in this manner (see, e.g., the cognitive-functional approach of Marmaridou 2000). The way Hungarian demonstratives work does not support the latter claim. Along with universal characteristics, it can be observed in Hungarian that, in the non-attributive (independent) use of these pronouns, event deixis (a subtype of spatial deixis) exhibits properties that it shares with discourse deixis, whereas discourse deixis leads on to the anaphoric use of demonstratives. In Hungarian, the switchover between the two types of use is clearly associated with perspective; in particular, with the shift from the referential centre to a neutral vantage point.

Claudia Maienborn, Klaus von Heusinger, Paul Portner (eds.), An International Handbook of Natural Language Meaning, Vol. 3, 2407-2431. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter., 2012

This paper provides an overview of the form, meaning, and use of deictic expressions from a cross-linguistic point of view. The fi rst part of the paper is concerned with the psychological foundations for a linguistic theory of deixis. It is argued that the use of deictic expressions presupposes a theory-of-mind that enables the communicative partners to adopt the perspective of another person. The second part of the paper provides an overview of deictic expressions in the world's languages. Two basic types of deixis are distinguished: participant deixis, which concerns the speech participants, and object deixis, which concerns elements of the situational and discourse context. The paper argues that person deictics are similar to anaphors and participant deictics, notably demonstratives, are used to establish joint attention, which is one of the most fundamental functions of human communication, providing a prerequisite for social interaction, cognition, and discourse.

The Typology of Semantic Alignment, 2008

Applied Psycholinguistics, 1984

Canadian Journal of Linguistics/Revue canadienne de linguistique, 2019

Harbour (2016) argues for a parsimonious universal set of features for grammatical person distinctions, and suggests (ch. 7) that the same features may also form the basis for systems of deixis. We apply this proposal to an analysis of Heiltsuk, a Wakashan language with a particularly rich set of person-based deictic contrasts (Rath 1981). Heiltsuk demonstratives and third-person pronominal enclitics distinguish proximal-to-speaker, proximal-to-addressee, and distal (in addition to an orthogonal visibility contrast). There are no forms marking proximity to third persons (e.g., ‘near them’) or identifying the location of discourse participants (e.g., ‘you near me’ vs. ‘you over there’), nor does the deictic system make use of the clusivity contrast that appears in the pronoun paradigm (e.g., ‘this near you and me’ vs. ‘this near me and others’). We account for the pattern by implementing Harbour's spatial element χ as a function that yields proximity to its first- or second-perso...

Pragmatics & Cognition, 2001

This article deals with spatial deixis in Lithuanian (the issue of demonstratives). Spatial deixis is lexicalized by different parts of speech in different languages: by adverbs of place (e.g., here and there), verbs (come and go) and demonstratives. The demonstratives this and that are usually considered to be spatial deictics in their basic use. For instance, this house and that house indicate closeness to and distance from the speaker. This is called a proximal deictic and that – a distal deictic. Some languages have demonstratives with 3 and 4 way distinctions on the proximal-distal dimension. According to some Lithuanian authors, the Lithuanian language is among them and has a ternary system of demonstratives (deictic pronouns): šis is a proximal deictic, anas – distal, however tas can be used to indicate both – a proximal ('near the speaker') and distal ('not near the speaker') object in Lithuanian. The aim of this research is to verify whether the Lithuanian system of demonstratives is ternary as it is stated or whether it has changed. This paper deals with two problematic cases. Therefore, first, psychological distance is considered in spoken Lithuanian and, second, frequency of usage of the pronoun tas in face-to-face communication to indicate an object that is not close to the speaker instead of anas is evaluated.