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Are there three or more distance contrasts in adnominal demonstratives?

Summary

Demonstratives are modifiers that can modify nouns (of any type and not just a restricted set such as location nouns) to mark position (e.g. deixis or reference within discourse). This doesn't have to be only Euclidean distance (meters, inches etc.), it could also be concerned with near or far in relation to the interlocutors (cf. Wolof). If the system of adnominal demonstratives includes an anaphoric demonstrative this does not count as a third distance.

Procedure

1. Find 'demonstratives'.
2. Code 1 if there are three or more adnominal demonstratives marking different degrees of distance, including distance from the speaker or interlocutor.
3. Code 0 if there are less than three adnominal demonstratives marking different degrees of distance, including distance from the speaker or interlocutor.

Examples

Thayore (ISO 639-3: thd, Glottolog: thay1249)

Coded 1. Adnominal demonstratives have a 3-way distance contrast: (1) inh ‘speaker proximate’, (2) ulp ‘addressee proximate’ and (3) ith ‘distal’ (Gaby 2006: 95).

a. yuk	    waarrmin	inh		parr_r	ngathn-mak
   THING   thing       DEM.SPKR.PROX	child	1SG.POSS-GEN
   ‘these things belong to my children’ (Gaby 2006: 174)
 
b. minh	ulp-thn			paatha-rr	nganh
   MEAT	DEM.ADR.PROX-ERG	bite-PST.PFV	1SG.ACC
   ‘that animal bit me’ (Gaby 2006: 96)

c. pam      ith       koow.miing  min=thurr
   man.NOM  DEM.DIST  face        good=FOC
   ‘that man has a nice face’ (Gaby 2006: 126)

Aghwan (ISO 639-3: xag, Glottolog: aghw1237)

There are relics of a complex system of distal differentiation, but it is not active anymore (Gippert et al. 2008: II–38). Aghwan is coded 0.

Further reading

Diessel, Holger. 2013. Distance contrasts in demonstratives. In Matthew S. Dryer & Martin Haspelmath (eds), The world atlas of language structures online. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.

References

Gaby, Alice Rose. 2006. A grammar of Kuuk Thaayorre. Melbourne: University of Melbourne. (Doctoral dissertation.)

Gippert, Jost, Wolfgang Schulze, Zaza Aleksidze & Jean-Pierre Mahe. 2008. The Caucasian Albanian Palimpsests of Mount Sinai. Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols.

Related Features

• GB036 Do adnominal demonstratives show an elevation distinction?
• GB037 Do adnominal demonstratives show a visible-nonvisible distinction?

Patron

Jay Latarche and Jeremy Collins