Semantic Typology of Demonstratives

Abstract

While traditional semantic accounts of demonstratives assume spatial contrast to be fundamental, typological studies reveal that the encoded meanings go well beyond physical distance and involve contrasts in perceptual and epistemic access. This article reviews the main findings from typological studies and the implications they have for the semantic analysis of demonstratives. The typological picture suggests that a uniformly applicable analysis puts very little into the lexical meaning of demonstratives, allowing for contextual information to determine their denotation differently across contexts and languages. By keeping the inherent semantics of demonstratives minimal and allowing language-specific conventionalizations of contextual information, we can bridge the gap between the typological observations and formal semantic theories of demonstratives.