Demonstratives in Cross-Linguistic Perspective

The definitive guide to demonstratives, which play a key role in language acquisition and use.

Demonstratives with their pointing gestures are amongst the first words that children learn, and they have fascinated theorists by the combination of slender semantic content and the practical force in communication. This book is for researchers and students in linguistics, philosophy and psychology interested in demonstratives, a key anchor tying language to the world.Demonstratives play a crucial role in the acquisition and use of language. Bringing together a team of leading scholars this detailed study, a first of its kind, explores meaning and use across fifteen typologically and geographically unrelated languages to find out what cross-linguistic comparisons and generalizations can be made, and how this might challenge current theory in linguistics, psychology, anthropology and philosophy. Using a shared experimental task, rounded out with studies of natural language use, specialists in each of the languages undertook extensive fieldwork for this comparative study of semantics and usage. An introduction summarizes the shared patterns and divergences in meaning and use that emerge.