Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-v9fdk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-19T05:21:46.148Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Deictic Features of Demonstratives: A Typological Survey with Special Reference to the Miao Group

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 June 2016

Matthias Gerner
Matthias Gerner*
Affiliation:
City University of Hong Kong
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article is centred on the concept of the deictic feature embedded in demonstratives. A principled taxonomy of deictic features attested cross-linguistically is proposed, with the aim of being as comprehensive as possible. The list of deictic features previously identified is greatly expanded to include 15 features, with which 52 deictic values are associated. The morphological strategies for encoding deictic features in demonstratives are also examined. Three techniques are identified: (i) isolating; (ii) agglutinative or serial; and (iii) inflectional encoding. A number of the deictic features discussed in this article, along with their morphological realization strategies, are illustrated with data from the Miao Group of languages, spoken in the People’s Republic of China.

Résumé

Résumé

Le présent article se concentre sur le concept du trait déictique implantée dans les démonstratifs. On y propose une taxonomie structurée, aussi complète que possible, des traits déictiques attestés dans les langues du monde. La liste des traits déictiques reconnus précédemment est élargie pour inclure 15 traits, auxquels sont associées 52 valeurs déictiques. En outre, une attention particulière est consacrée aux stratégies morphologiques permettant de coder ces traits déictiques dans les démonstratifs. Trois techniques sont identifiées : le codage (i) isolant; (ii) agglutinant ou sériel; et (iii) flexionnel. Un bon nombre des traits déictiques présentés ici, ainsi que leurs stratégies morphologiques de réalisation, sont illustrés avec des données venant du groupe Miao, un ensemble de langues parlées dans la République populaire de Chine.

Type
Articles
Information
Canadian Journal of Linguistics/Revue canadienne de linguistique , Volume 54 , Issue 1 , March 2009 , pp. 43 - 89
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Linguistic Association/Association canadienne de linguistique 2009 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Achard, Pierre. 1992. Entre deixis et anaphore: le renvoi du contexte en situation. Les opérateurs ‘alors’ et ‘maintenant’ en français. In La déixis, ed. Morel, Mary-Annick and Danon-Boileau, Laurent, 583–592. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.Google Scholar
Anderson, S.R., and Keenan, Edward L.. 1985. Deixis. In Language typology and syntactic description, Vol. 3, ed. Shopen, Timothy, 259–308. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Bar-Hillel, Yehoshua. 1954. Indexical expressions. Mind 63:359–379.10.1093/mind/LXIII.251.359Google Scholar
Bliss, Heather, and Ritter, Elizabeth. 2001. Developing a database of personal and demonstrative pronoun paradigms: Conceptual and technical challenges. In Proceedings of IRCS Workshop on Linguistic Databases, 38–47. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania. Available at: www.ldc.upenn.edu/annotation/database/proceedings.html [accessed November 2008].Google Scholar
Boas, Franz. 1947. Kwakiutl grammar, with a glossary of the suffixes. Transactions of the American Philosophical Society 37:203–377.Google Scholar
Boas, Franz. 1963. Introduction to the handbook of American Indian languages. Washington: Georgetown University Press.Google Scholar
Bril, Isabelle. 2004. Deixis in Nêlêmwa (New Caledonia). In Deixis and demonstratives in Oceanic languages, ed. Senft, Gunter, 99–127. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics.Google Scholar
Bühler, Karl. 1934. Sprachtheorie: Die Darstellungsfunktion der Sprache. Jena, Germany: Fischer.Google Scholar
Cao, Cuiyun. 2001. Miao-Hanyu bijiao [Comparison of Miao and Chinese]. Guiyang, China: Guizhou Minzu Chubanshe.Google Scholar
Chafe, Wallace L. 1987. Cognitive constraints on information flow. In Coherence and grounding in discourse, ed. Tomlin, Russell S., 21–51. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Comrie, Bernard. 1981. Language Universals and linguistic typology. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Comrie, Bernard. 2001. Different views of language typology. In Language typology and language Universals, Vol. 1, ed. Haspelmath, Martin, König, Ekkhard, Oesterreicher, Wulf, and Raible, Wolfgang, 25–39. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Cook, Eung-Do, and Howe, Darin. 2005. Chapter 9: Aboriginal languages in Canada. In Contemporary linguistic analysis, 5th ed., ed. O’Grady, William and Archibald, John, 294–309. Toronto: Addison Wesley Longman. Available at www.fp.ucalgary.ca/howed/CookHowe2004.pdf [accessed November 2008].Google Scholar
Corbett, Greville. 1991. Gender. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/CBO9781139166119Google Scholar
Croft, William. 2003. Typology and Universals. 2nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Diessel, Holger. 1997. The diachronic reanalysis of demonstratives in crosslinguistic perspective. Chicago Linguistic Society 33:83–97.Google Scholar
Diessel, Holger. 1999a. The morphosyntax of demonstratives in synchrony and diachrony. Linguistic Typology 3:1–49.Google Scholar
Diessel, Holger. 1999b. Demonstratives: Form, function, and grammaticalization. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.10.1075/tsl.42Google Scholar
Diessel, Holger. 2005. Distance contrasts in demonstratives. In World atlas of language structures, ed. Haspelmath, Martin, Dryer, Matthew S., Gil, David, and Comrie, Bernard, 170–173. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Dixon, R.M.W. 1972. The Dyirbal language of North Queensland. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Dixon, R.M.W. 1979. Ergativity. Language 55:59–138.10.2307/412519Google Scholar
Dixon, R.M.W. 1997. The rise and fall of languages. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/CBO9780511612060Google Scholar
Dixon, R.M.W. 2003. Demonstratives: A cross-linguistic typology. Studies in Language 27: 61-112.10.1075/sl.27.1.04dixGoogle Scholar
Edel, May M. 1939. The Tillamook language. International Journal of American Linguistics 10:1–57.Google Scholar
Fillmore, Charles J. 1982. Towards a descriptive framework for spatial deixis. In Speech, place and action: Studies in deixis and related topics, ed. Jarvella, Robert J. and Klein, Wolfgang, 31–59. Chichester, UK: John Wiley.Google Scholar
Fortescue, Michael. 1984. West Greenlandic. London: Croom Helm.Google Scholar
Fraser, T., and Joly, A.. 1980. Le système de la déixis : endophore et cohésion discursive en anglais. Modèles linguistiques 2(2):22–51.Google Scholar
Gerner, Matthias, and Bisang, Walter. 2008a. Inflectional speaker-role classifiers in Weining Ahmao. Journal of Pragmatics 40:719–732.Google Scholar
Gerner, Matthias, and Bisang, Walter. 2008b. Inflectional classifiers in Weining Ahmao: Mirror of the history of a people. Ms., City University of Hong Kong.Google Scholar
Greenberg, Joseph H. 1966. Some Universals of grammar with particular reference to the order of meaningful elements. In Universals of language, ed. Greenberg, Joseph H., 73–113. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Greenberg, Joseph H. 1987. Language in the Americas. Stanford: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Hagman, Roy S. 1977. Nama Hottentot grammar. Doctoral dissertation, Indiana University.Google Scholar
Halliday, M.A.K., and Hasan, Ruqaiya. 1976. Cohesion in English. London: Longman.Google Scholar
Haude, Katharina. 2006. A grammar of Movima. Doctoral dissertation, University of Nijmegen.Google Scholar
Heath, Jeffrey. 1980. Nunggubuyu myths and ethnographic texts. Canberra: Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies.Google Scholar
Heath, Jeffrey. 1984. Functional grammar of Nunggubuyu. Canberra: Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies.Google Scholar
Hellwig, Birgit. 2003. The grammatical coding of postural semantics in Goemai (a West Chadic Language of Nigeria). Nijmegen: Max Planck Series in Psycholinguistics.Google Scholar
Himmelmann, Nikolaus P. 1996. Demonstratives in narrative discourse: A taxonomy of universal uses. In Studies in anaphora, ed. Fox, Barbara A., 205–254. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.10.1075/tsl.33.08himGoogle Scholar
Himmelmann, Nikolaus P. 1997. Deikticon, Artikel, Nominalphrase: Zur Emergent syntaktischer Struktur. Tubingen: Niemeyer.Google Scholar
Hope, Edward Reginald. 1974. The deep syntax of Lisu sentences: A transformational case grammar. Canberra: Australian National University.Google Scholar
Jacobson, Stephen. 1995. A practical grammar of the Central Alaskan Yup’ik Eskimo language. Fairbanks: Alaska Native Language Center, University of Alaska.Google Scholar
Kleiber, Georges. 1992. Anaphore-Deixis : deux approaches concurrentes. In La déixis, ed. Morel, Mary-Annick and Danon-Boileau, Laurent, 613–626. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.Google Scholar
Klein-Andreu, Flora. 1996. Anaphora, deixis, and the evolution of Latin ille. In Studies in anaphora, ed. Fox, Barbara A., 305–331. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Lecarme, Jacqueline. 1999. Nominal tense and tense theory. In Empirical issues informal syntax and semantics Vol. 2: Selected papers from the Colloque de Syntaxe et Sémantique à Paris (CSSP 1997), ed. Corblin, Francis, Dobrovie-Sorin, Carmen, and Marandin, Jean-Marie, 333–354. The Hague: Holland Academic Graphics.Google Scholar
Levinson, Stephen C. 1983. Pragmatics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/CBO9780511813313Google Scholar
Levinson, Stephen C. 2004. Deixis. In The handbook of pragmatics, ed. Horn, Laurence and Ward, Gregory, 97–121. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Lyons, John. 1977. Semantics. Vol. 2. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Maillard, Michel. 1974. Essai de typologie des substituts diaphoriques. Langue française 21:55–71.Google Scholar
Mallinson, Graham. 1986. Rumanian. London: Croom Helm.Google Scholar
Margetts, Anna. 2004. Spatial deictics in Saliba. In Deixis and demonstratives in Oceanic languages, ed. Senft, Gunter, 37–57. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics.Google Scholar
Matisoff, James. 1973. The grammar of Lahu. University of California Publications in Linguistics 75. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Mey, Jacob. 1993. Pragmatics: An introduction. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Nagaraja, K.S. 1985. Khasi: A descriptive analysis. Pune, India: Deccan College Post-Graduate and Research Institute.Google Scholar
Nordlinger, Rachel, and Sadler, Louisa. 2004. Nominal tense in crosslinguistic perspective. Language 80:776–806.10.1353/lan.2004.0219Google Scholar
Ozanne-Rivierre, Françoise. 2004. Spatial deixis in Iaai. In Deixis and demonstratives in Oceanic languages, ed. Senft, Gunter, 129–139. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics.Google Scholar
Peiros, Ilia. 1998. Comparative linguistics in Southeast Asia. Canberra: Australian National University.Google Scholar
Lili, Rabel. 1961. Khasi: A language of Assam. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press.Google Scholar
Randriamasimanana, Charles. 1984. Articles, demonstratives and locability in Malagasy. Working Papers in Linguistics 10:131–150. University of Melbourne.Google Scholar
Reed, Irene, Miyaoka, Osahito, and Jacobson, Steven. 1977. Yup’ik Eskimo grammar. Fairbanks: Alaska Native Language Center, University of Alaska.Google Scholar
Reesink, Ger. 1987. Structures and their function in Usan. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Saeed, John I. 1997. Semantics. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Schmidt, Conrad J. 1999. Schaum’s outline of Spanish Grammar. 4th ed. New York: McGraw-Hill.Google Scholar
Schwartz, Linda J., and Dunnigan, Timothy. 1986. Pronouns and pronominal categories in Southwestern Ojibwe. In Pronominal systems, ed. Wiesemann, Ursula, 285–322. Tübingen: Gunter Narr Verlag.Google Scholar
Senft, Gunter. 2004. Aspects of spatial deixis in Kilivila. In Deixis and demonstratives in Oceanic languages, ed. Senft, Gunter, 59–80. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics.Google Scholar
Shibatani, Masayoshi. 1990. The languages of Japan. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Wang, Fushi. 1985. Miaoyu Jianzhi [An outline grammar of Miao]. Beijing: Minzu Chubanshe.Google Scholar
Wang, Deguang. 1986. Weining Miaoyu huayu cailiao [Language material in the Weining dialect of the Miao language]. Minzu Yuwen 3:69–80.Google Scholar
Webber, Bonnie Lynn. 1991. Structure and ostension in the interpretation of discourse deixis. Language and Cognitive Processes 6:107–135.Google Scholar
Xiong, Yuyou, and Cohen, Diana. 2005. Miao-Han-Ying xuexi shiyong shouce [Student’s practical Miao-Chinese-English Handbook]. Kunming, China: Yunnan Minzu Chubanshe.Google Scholar