Demonstratives

[Koontz John E]

I'm not sure why the list processing software bounced this post from Rory
Larson.  Let's see if it'll take it from me.

>>From rlarson at unlnotes01.unl.edu Mon Apr  9 09:34:24 2001

I believe "jener" is moderately common in German; it's certainly
one of the basic words used in texts to illustrate declensional
paradigms.  "Dieser" is the proximate form.  I can't recall that they
have an intermediate form other than the definite article itself used
as a demonstrative.  Does this sound right?

In English, we normally restrict ourselves to a two-level system:
"this" = "look toward the speaker"; and "that" = "look away from
the speaker".  The Siouan languages have a three-level system,
e.g. Lakhota:  le / he / ka, or Omaha:  dhe / she / ga.  Could we
reasonably gloss these as:  le / dhe = "look toward the speaker";
he / she = "look toward the listener, or to an item the listener is
familiar with";  ka / ga = "look away from both the speaker and
the listener" ?  If so, would this be the general rule for three-level
demonstrative systems?  (If this has all just been discussed, I
apologize-- I just got on the list and haven't gone through the
archives yet.)

Rory