[An-lang] 'Visible' and 'invisible' demonstratives

[Bill Palmer]

Hi Christoph

Kokota (Meso-Melanesian, Santa Isabel) has 5 demonstrative categories described in my Kokota Grammar (2009, Uni Hawaii Press): touching, within reach, nearby, potentially visible, and not visible. I discuss their semantics but only a small amount to do with discourse. I hope that's of some interest.

Best
Bill

Associate Professor Bill Palmer
University of Newcastle
Lead Investigator, OzSpace project
Landscape, language and culture in Indigenous Australia.
Vice-President, Australian Linguistics Society

From: An-lang <an-lang-bounces at anu.edu.au> On Behalf Of Robert Blust
Sent: Thursday, 28 January 2021 5:58 AM
To: Christoph Holz <christoph.holz at my.jcu.edu.au>
Cc: an-lang at anu.edu.au
Subject: Re: [An-lang] 'Visible' and 'invisible' demonstratives

Hello Christoph,

For Austronesian cases, there is a summary in my open-access online book, The Austronesian languages (google my name + title).  See Chapter 5, 'The Lexicon', Sect. 5.4, 'Demonstratives, locatives, and directionals'.  Many languages have a first-person, second-person, third-person distance distinction, but for the distal member others distinguish 'in sight' vs. 'out of sight'.

I hope this helps.

Best,

Bob Blust

On Wed, Jan 27, 2021 at 3:35 AM Christoph Holz <christoph.holz at my.jcu.edu.au<mailto:christoph.holz at my.jcu.edu.au>> wrote:

Dear all,



I am working on a paper about the discourse functions of ‘visible’ and ‘invisible’ demonstratives, with a focus on Tiang (a Meso Melanesian language from New Ireland, PNG, which I am doing fieldwork on).



Are you aware of other languages with a ‘visible’/‘invisible’ distinction in demonstratives, and whether ‘visible’ and ‘invisible’ demonstratives differ in their discourse functions? I am interested in which demonstratives can act as anaphors and/or cataphors, and whether certain demonstratives are more frequent in a certain function. Most grammars do not really talk about this… Information on any language (Austronesian, Papuan, other language families) would be a great help.



Kind regards,

Christoph



Christoph Holz

PhD Candidate

James Cook University
Cairns, Australia
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