Demonstratives?

[Valentina Zaitseva]

Michael,
I remember that similar problewm was discussed in Herman Parret's article
of 1991 "Deixis and shifters after Jakobson", in: New vistas in grammar:
Invariance and Variation, ed. by Linda Waugh & Stephen Rudy.
Among other things, Parret is talking about non-referential uses of deixis.
In terms of Yokoyama's TDM, the specific example you are quoting, I think,
can be viewed as  a code item signalling the presence of propositional
knowledge and the lack of specificational one, i.e. a code "filler" for a
propositional term.
 The interesting part remaining unaccounted for "pogovorit' o tom o sem" is
the "ottenok" in the speaker's perspective: "nothing particularly
important."

Best,
Valentina Zaitseva, NYU


>Can anyone out there tell me if there is a specific term for
>demonstratives when used indefinitely (i) or non-referentially (ii)
>like in the following expression?
>
>(i) "pogovorit' o tom, o sem" 'to talk about this and that';
>
>or in the following sentence (from Turgenev's "Gamlet Shchigrovskogo uezda"):
>
>(ii) "Ja, vidite li, robok, i robok ne v _tu_ silu, chto ja
>provincial, a v _tu_ silu, chto ja strashno samoljubivyj chelovek."
>'I'm, you see, shy, and I'm shy not because I'm from boondocks, but
>because I'm terribly touchy person.'
>
>Non-deictic demonstratives? (sounds like "hot ice")
>
>my
>**************************************************************************
>"Russkaja idej"
>
>"Mu i sami-to okazalisj zdesj, ustav butj vragami.
>No pomimo vsego, mu okazalisj zhertvami sobstvennogo idealizma, ibo nasha
>izvechnaja toska po mirovoj kuljture  nichto inoje kak ocherednaja russkaja
>idej."
>                                                No comment ;-)
>**************************************************************************