Recent research suggests that pronoun interpretation is guided by the semantic coherence relations between clauses. However, it is not yet wellunderstood whether coherence effects extend to other anaphoric expressions beyond pronouns. We report an experiment on German, a language in which human antecedents can be referred to both with personal and demonstrative pronouns. How do anaphoric demons...

Abstract This paper argues, based on Lewis’ claim that communication is a coordination game (Lewis in Minnesota studies the philosophy of science, University Press, Minneapolis, pp 3–35, 1975), we can account for communicative function demonstratives without assuming they semantically refer. The appeal such theoretical version case non-referentialism role be accounted entering cul de sac trying...

A fundamental property of language is that it allows us to establish triadic joint attention to a referent, for instance by the use of spatial demonstratives. Traditional accounts of demonstrative choice focused on the physical proximity of the referent to the interlocutors. However, recent work taking into account the multimodal context in which spatial demonstrative use is generally embedded ...

It is argued that the pronouns ‘she’ and ‘he’ are disguised complex demonstratives of the form ‘that female/male’. Three theories of complex demonstratives are examined and shown to be committed to the view that ‘s/he’ turns out to be an empty term when used to refer to a hermaphrodite. A fourth theory of complex demonstratives, one that is hermaphrodite friendly, is proposed. It maintains that...

In this paper we examine the differences in use between distal and proximal demonstrative terms (e.g., singular “this” and “that”, and plural “these” and “those” in English). The proximal–distal distinction appears to be made in all languages and therefore promises to be an important window on the cognitive mechanisms underlying language production and comprehension. We address the problem of a...

Two Finnish language comprehension experiments are presented which suggest that the referential properties of pronouns and demonstratives cannot be reduced straightforwardly to the salience level of the antecedent. The findings, from a sentence completion study and visual-world eye-tracking study, reveal an asymmetry in which features of the antecedent Finnish pronouns and demonstratives are mo...

Abstract Deictic co-speech gestures (DCSGs) are commonly regarded as intimately related to exophoric demonstrative forms; yet, no account is available that formalises this relation. This paper proposes DCSGs spell-out part of the internal structure demonstratives: concretely, they contribute spatial coordinates (direction and distance, syntactically encoded by Demonstrative ‘Dem’ head a Measure...

This paper is concerned with pronominal demonstatives (referred to as psychologically distal demonstratives by Johannessen 2008a, b) in older Norwegian spoken language, and written Swedish from the 19th century present-day. We show that can be attested speakers born different parts of Norway century, texts same period. However, forms do not seem used precisely way two languages. In Swedish, han...