Distal Demonstrative Hitlo in Taiwanese Southern Min

This article investigates the use of distal demonstrative Hitlo in Taiwanese Southern Min (TSM) from a discourse-pragmatic perspective. The analysis is based on a 5-hour corpus of spoken data, including daily conversations, radio interviews, TV drama series, and some random examples. A total of 172 tokens of Hitlos are identified in the data. They can be divided into six categories according to their functions: firstly, exophoric usage, those Hitlos which refer to an object non-linguistically which can be identified in the immediate situation; secondly, endophoric usage, those which refer to an element textually; thirdly, referent introducing function, those which can be used to introduce a new but identifiable referent into the conversation (the referent usually has topical importance); fourthly, hedging expression, those which serve as a marker of imprecision; fifthly, a condition introducing marker, those which function as an indicator of the coming of a conditional sentence; finally, pause fillers, those which help speakers to manage speech turn or indicate the mental states In addition, an interactive function which Hitlo is found to serve will be discussed. Moreover, a grammaticalizational process involving semantic bleaching which Hitlo is probably undergoing is revealed in general. Finally, a filled demonstrative principle, stating that it may be a universal phenomenon to use demonstratives as filled pause will be proposed.