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

[Ed Luna]

Dear Christoph,

I wonder if you've looked into the treatment of proximal-medial-distal
demonstratives in Japanese and Korean, which due to extensive contact or
other reasons, behave quite similarly in discourse: one main factor is that
only distal demonstratives can be used to refer to entities that are
"removed" from the "here and now" context.

So, you can say the following to refer to "that guy" (= 'some random guy')
in both Japanese and Korean, using either distal or the medial
demonstratives:

Jp       ano   aitsu
Kr       jeo     nom
          DIST  guy              'that guy (over there)'

Jp      sono  aitsu
Kr      geu    nom
          MED  guy              'that guy (near the listener)'

However, one can't really use the proximal demonstratives for anyone
removed from the 'here and now' context (which is unlike the English use of
'there was this guy the other day...'):

Jp      *kono    aitsu
Kr       *i          nom
          PROX  guy            'this guy (discussed abstractly)'

Perhaps another avenue you could explore is what devices Tiang speakers use
when they do a word search. For Japanese and Korean speakers, they pretty
much use distal and medial demonstratives exclusively for this purpose -
and this is where they differ slightly: in Japanese, most speakers utter an
extended "ano" (distal), while some utter a "sono" (medial). In Korean,
these are switched - in my experience, more speakers use the medial "geu"
for most word searches, while extended word searches involve an elongated
form of the distal "jeo".

I'm not sure if this is helpful (I hope it is), but this is something that
has been on the back of my mind for awhile now.


Best,

Ed


On Wed, Jan 27, 2021 at 10:23 PM Christoph Holz <
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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> An-lang at anu.edu.au
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>


-- 
Edmundo Cruz Luna, PhD
Visiting Associate Professor
Kyushu University
Faculty of Humanities
Department of English Language and Literature
ed.lawar.ijo at gmail.com
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