Good evening, afternoon, or morning to you, people of r/conlangs. Today's Saturday, and that means it's time for another typological paper! Once again, there will be some prompts for you to discuss in the comments.
Demonstratives: A cross-linguistic typology (Dixon)
This week's paper was again submitted by u/PyrolatrousCoagulate and presents a cross-linguistic typology of demonstratives. It primarily distinguishes three main types of demonstratives: nominal, local adverbial and verbal. It then surveys their basic properties: forms, functions and types of reference. More on that can be found if you click on the link above. Dixon defines a demonstrative as "a grammatical word (or, occasionally, a clitic or affix) which can have pointing (or deictic) reference;" Now, let's move unto the prompts:
- What are the morphosyntactic properties of demonstratives in your language, if they exist at all?
- How are the three main types proposed by the paper included, if at all?
- Is there any syncretism or polysemy with regards to the forms of demonstratives?
- Do the demonstratives in your language exhibit any characteristics that are not included in the prototypical definition of demonstratives?
Remember to try to comment on other people's languages
Submit your papers here!
So, that's about it for this week's edition. See you next Saturday, and happy conlanging!