name this category

[Hardie, Andrew]

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The category you mention probably has lots of names. "Deixis" seems a suitable covering term for demonstratives and words that "point" in the discourse rather than in the world. What is interesting about it from my point of view is that it clearly is a category, and yet it just as clearly cuts across the boundaries of two other categories, thus posing a problem for purely hierarchical conceptions of word classification.
 
But I don't think this issue is unique to I-A. Indeed it is found in English too though there are items missing or replaced in the some sets (on the adverb front: hither thither whither, here there where, hence thence whence; and on the "pronoun" front, this that which, he ( ) who, ( ) that what) and no relative-interrogative distinction.
 
In part-of-speech tagging, it is typical to label the first set of things as "(demonstrative/interrogative/relative) adverbs" and the second set of things as "(demonstrative/interrogative/relative) determiners" rather than pronouns. Thus they end up in separate major-level categories despite the morphological and semantic similarity between them.
 
best
 
Andrew.
 
 
Andrew Hardie
Department of Linguistics
Bowland College
Lancaster University
Lancaster LA1 4YT
 
a.hardie at lancaster.ac.uk <mailto:a.hardie at lancaster.ac.uk> 
 

________________________________

From: South Asian Linguists on behalf of Bob Eaton
Sent: Fri 17/11/2006 15:02
To: VYAKARAN at LISTSERV.SYR.EDU
Subject: name this category


VYAKARAN: South Asian Languages and Linguistics Net Editors: Tej K. Bhatia, Syracuse University, New York John Peterson, University of Osnabrueck, Germany Details: Send email to listserv at listserv.syr.edu and say: INFO VYAKARAN Subscribe:Send email to listserv at listserv.syr.edu and say: SUBSCRIBE VYAKARAN FIRST_NAME LAST_NAME (Substitute your real name for first_name last_name) Archives: http://listserv.syr.edu 

Thanks for the help with the "name this construction" question I had. Now I have a question about references related to word categories for this phenomena, which Indo-Aryan languages show us that we (or at least, I) "didn't know before".

 

Specificially, I-A languages show us that there something somehow related between these sets of words:

 

yahaa.n

wahaa.n

kahaa.n

jahaa.n

PRX-LOC

DST-LOC

INTR-LOC

REL-LOC

 

isko

usko

kisko

jisko

PRX-3SG-DAT

DST-3SG-DAT

INTR-3SG-DAT

REL-3SG-DAT

 

The former ones I would want to call "Adverbs" since they relate to location.

The latter ones I would want to call "Pronouns" since they relate to things standing for nouns.

 

Deixis works for "PRX" and "DST", but in anyone's mind are "INTR" (interrogative) and/or "REL" (relative) related to Deixis? Or perhaps a supracategory like "exophora"?

 

But it would be nice if we had a single category that captured this similarity.

 

Has anyone done a good treatment of this?

 

Thanks in advance,

Bob