Product Code Database
Demonstratives (abbreviated ) are , 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 (where the speaker or sometimes the listener is to provide context), but also in intra-discourse reference (including Abstraction) or anaphora, where the meaning is dependent on something other than the relative physical location of the speaker. An example is whether something is currently being said or was said earlier.
Demonstrative constructions include demonstrative or demonstrative , which specify (as in Put that coat on), and demonstrative , which stand independently (as in Put that on). The demonstratives in English language are this, that, these, those, and the archaic yon and yonder, along with this one, these ones, that one and those ones as substitutes for the pronouns.
Other languages, like Finnish language, Nandi, Hawaiian, Latin, Spanish language, Portuguese, Italian language (in some formal writing), Armenian, Serbo-Croatian, Macedonian, Georgian, Euskera, Korean language, Japanese, Ukrainian, Bengali language, and Sri Lankan Tamil make a three-way distinction. Typically there is a distinction between proximal or first person (objects near to the speaker), medial or second person (objects near to the addressee), and distal or third person (objects far from both). So for example, in Portuguese:
Further oppositions are created with place adverbs.
in Italian (medial pronouns, in most of Italy, only survive in historical texts and bureaucratic texts. However, they're of wide and very common usage in some Regions, like Tuscany):
in Hawaiian:
in Armenian (based on the proximal "s", medial "d/t", and distal "n"):
and, in Georgian:
and, in Ukrainian (note that Ukrainian has not only number, but also three grammatical genders in singular):
and, in Japanese:
In Nandi (Kalenjin of Kenya, Uganda and Eastern Congo):
Chego chu, Chego choo, Chego chuun
"this milk", "that milk" (near the second person) and "that milk" (away from the first and second person, near a third person or even further away).
Ancient Greek has a three-way distinction between ( hóde "this here"), ( hoûtos "this"), and ( ekeînos "that").
Spanish language, Tamil language and Seri language also make this distinction. French language has a two-way distinction, with the use of postpositions "-ci" (proximal) and "-là" (distal) 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 Arabic 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 (and the Scandinavian languages), 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 (demonstratives) 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 language, cognate to the English yonder, but it is used only in formal registers.
Cognates of "yonder" still exist in some Northern English and Scots dialects;
There are languages which make a four-way distinction, such as Northern Sami:
The demonstratives in Seri language are compound forms based on the definite articles (themselves derived from verbs) and therefore incorporate the positional information of the articles (standing, sitting, lying, coming, going) in addition to the three-way spatial distinction. This results in a quite elaborated set of demonstratives.
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:
| ! Spanish !! Portuguese !! gender |
| masculine |
| feminine |
| neuter |
Some forms of Spanish (Caribbean Spanish, Andalusian Spanish, etc.) 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" (m), "toda aquela" (f) or "tudo aquilo" (n) in Portuguese, although the neuter forms require a masculine adjective agreement: "Tudo (n) aquilo (n) está quebrado (m)" ( All of that is broken).
Classical Chinese had three main demonstrative pronouns: proximal (this), distal (that), and distance-neutral (this or that). 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 dynasty 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 , although 此 continues to be used with some frequency in modern written Chinese. Cantonese uses proximal and distal instead of 這 and 那, respectively.
Similarly, Northern Wu languages tend to also have a distance-neutral demonstrative , which is etymologically a checked-tone derivation of . In lects such as Shanghainese, distance-based demonstratives exist, but are only used constrastively. Suzhou dialect, on the other hand, has several demonstratives that form a two-way contrast, but also have 搿, which is neutral.
Hungarian has two spatial demonstratives: ez (this) and az (that). These inflect for number and case even in attributive position (attributes usually remain uninflected in Hungarian) with possible orthographic changes; e.g., ezzel (with this), abban (in that). A third degree of deixis is also possible in Hungarian, with the help of the am- prefix: amaz (that there). The use of this, however, is emphatic (when the speaker wishes to emphasize the distance) and not mandatory.
The Cree language has a special demonstrative for "things just gone out of sight," and Ilokano language, 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.", citing The Tiriyó language has a demonstrative for "things audible but non-visible"
While most languages and Language family 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(s), as well as by visibility and whether or not the object is in motion.
A demonstrative determiner specifies a noun as Definiteness, singular or plural, and proximal or distal:
A demonstrative pronoun stands on its own, replacing rather than modifying a noun:
There are four common demonstrative pronouns in English: this, that, these, those. (2025). 9780199658237, Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780199658237 Some dialects, such as Southern American English, also use yon and yonder, where the latter is usually employed as a demonstrative determiner. Author Bill Bryson laments the "losses along the way" of yon and yonder:
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 (or occasionally those) refers to something previously spoken, while this (or occasionally these) refers to something about to be spoken (or, occasionally, something being simultaneously spoken).
|
|
