Pragmatic Demonstratives

Reference and indexicality are two central topics in the Philosophy of Language that are closely tied together. In the first part of this book, a description theory of reference is developed and contrasted with the prevailing direct reference view with the goal of laying out their advantages and disadvantages. The author defends his version of indirect reference against well-known objections raised by Kripke in Naming and Necessity and his successors, and also addresses linguistic aspects like compositionality. In the second part, a detailed survey on indexical expressions is given based on a variety of typological data. Topics addressed are, among others: Kaplan's logic of demonstratives, conversational versus utterance context, context-shifting indexicals, the deictic center, token-reflexivity, vagueness of spatial and temporal indexicals, reference rules, and the epistemic and cognitive role of indexicals. From a descriptivist perspective on reference, various examples of simple and complex indexicals are analyzed in first-order predicate logic with reified contexts. A critical discussion of essential indexicality, de se readings of attitudes and accompanying puzzles rounds up the investigation.

This paper suggests that reference to phenomenal qualities is best understood as involving iconicity, that is, a passage from sign-vehicle to object that exploits a similarity between the two. This contrasts with a version of the ‘phenomenal concept strategy’ that takes indexicality to be central. However, since it is doubtful that phenomenal qualities are capable of causally interacting with anything, indexical reference seems inappropriate. While a theorist like David Papineau is independently coming to something akin to iconicity, I think some of the awkwardness that plagues his account would be remedied by transitioning to a more inclusive philosophy of signs.

This thesis presents a comprehensive analysis of the Blackfoot demonstrative system. Previous research on Blackfoot (Uhlenbeck 1938, Taylor 1969, Frantz 2009) identifies sixteen morphemes that make up demonstrative words in the language. I propose a demonstrative template that takes into account the fixed morpheme ordering observed in demonstrative forms. Based on the proposed template, I motivate the analysis of the suffix -ka as encoding motion towards the speaker as this accounts for its position together with the suffixes -ya, -ma, and -hka, each of which encode features of motion or visibility. In describing situational functions of each of the morphemes, I make use of Imai’s (2003) inventory of spatial deictic features. I present the first analysis of the morphologically analyzable, but heretofore undescribed suffix -o as encoding the geometric configuration feature [interior]. This thesis also offers the first explanation of the syntactic contexts that govern the two identificational suffixes -ayi and -ao’ka.
Earlier analyses of the Blackfoot demonstrative system focus on the spatial features encoded by situational uses of demonstratives to the exclusion of other pragmatic functions. As a result, the proposals do not address variations in meaning when used in non-situational pragmatic contexts. To address this gap in the literature, I examine non-situational pragmatic functions, as well as symbolic situational demonstrative uses (e.g. deictic projection, wider-context). The result of this study is a comprehensive analysis of the Blackfoot demonstrative system which takes into account both syntactic and pragmatic functions, providing new insights into the meanings of many of the morphemes that comprise the system. It also provides support from Blackfoot for Himmelmann’s (1996) claim that there are four universal pragmatic functions of demonstratives, and support for Diessel’s (1999) claim that situational uses are the basic demonstrative uses from which the others are derived.

Previous analyses of the Blackfoot demonstrative system (Uhlenbeck 1938, Taylor 1969, Frantz 2009) focus on situational uses of demonstratives and often conflate the meanings of multiple pragmatic uses of demonstratives into overly broad definitions. In this paper, I discuss the meanings of Blackfoot demonstratives in terms of their pragmatic functions. I follow Himmelmann's (1996) taxonomy of universal demonstrative uses as my criteria for delineating demonstratives into four categories: situational; discourse deixis; tracking; and recognitional. I demonstrate that recognizing the different pragmatic functions of demonstratives allows for a more nuanced description of their meanings and usage.

The Purik member of the Tibetic language family is spoken in the western periphery of the Tibetic linguistic area. In Purik, two demonstratives, de ‘that’ and e ‘the other’, occur not only pre- and pronominally, but also post- and proverbally, in which case they take scope over the sentence they terminate. The proverbal de, occurring instead of an existential predicate, locates an entity or property in the topical situation (which typically corresponds to the interlocutors’ current one). The postverbal de, occurring after a full-fledged sentence, has the effect of laying out the information conveyed by this sentence, inviting the addressee to retrace it, and implying that it should be clear. By contrast, pro- and postverbal e points to information that requires a shift of attention.
The present paper demonstrates that Old Tibetan (OT) ga re ‘where is (X)?’, clause-linking (s)te ~ de, and V-ta re ‘lest (it) will V’, and other phenomena found in written and spoken Tibetic varieties, are best understood if analysed as traces of the mentioned clause-final demonstratives. The comparative study of spoken Tibetic varieties thus not only contributes to our understanding of particular OT texts, but also sheds light on the development and dispersion of Tibetic during the Imperial Period (7th–9th centuries CE).

In a number of East and South-East Asian languages, certain grammatical elements such as pronouns, generic nouns, or demonstratives (eg. one, thing, this) have acquired additional pragmatic functions. Well-documented examples of this grammaticalization process are the Mandarin de, the Malay punya/nya/mia and the Japanese no (cf. Yap, Matthews et al. 2004); the grammaticalized element occurs in the sentence-final position encoding speaker’s certainty about the proposition. A similar development has taken place in Abui (a Papuan language of Eastern Indonesia); markers describing speaker’s attitude towards a proposition (evidentiality and assertion) are recruited from two sources: (i) demonstratives and (ii) the utterance verb ba ‘say’.

This paper explores the constructional meaning of NPs preceded by a demonstrative determiner and NPs preceded by a definite article, in both Spanish and Dutch. First, I will give a brief, general description of the meaning of the two constructions, focusing on three features: unique identifiability, deictic force and predicating force. Then, a contrastive analysis will show that demonstrative determiners and definite articles differ crosslinguistically. A quantitative analysis of translational shifts will reveal a systematic shift between Dutch demonstrative determiners and Spanish definite articles. Through the qualitative analysis of several subgroups of examples, I will show that the Dutch and Spanish paradigms differ with regard to the features of deictic and predicating force. Both Dutch demonstratives and definite articles seem to be more semantically bleached and hence more grammaticalized than their Spanish counterparts, which may well go some way to explaining the frequent and systematic translational shifts. Finally, I will draw attention to some specific phenomena, such as the cultural embeddedness of anaphoric relations, and the role of demonstratives in evoking a visual frame, which also motivate translational shifts between demonstratives and definite articles, but are better interpreted as local translator's decisions, rather than as systemic contrastive differences between Dutch and Spanish.

Most inferentialists hope to bypass givenness by tracking the conditionals claimants are implicitly committed to. I argue that this approach is underdetermined because one can always construct parallel trees of conditionals. I illustrate this using the Müller-Lyer illusion and touching a table. In the former case, the lines are either even or uneven; in the latter case, a moving hand will either sweep through or be halted. For each possibility, we can rationally foresee consequents. However, I argue that, until and unless we benefit from what is given in experience, we cannot know whether to affirm the antecedents of those conditionals.

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Reference and indexicality are two central topics in the Philosophy of Language that are closely tied together. In the first part of this book, a description theory of reference is developed and contrasted with the prevailing direct reference view with the goal of laying out their advantages and disadvantages. The author defends his version of indirect reference against well-known objections raised by Kripke in Naming and Necessity and his successors, and also addresses linguistic aspects like compositionality. In the second part, a detailed survey on indexical expressions is given based on a variety of typological data. Topics addressed are, among others: Kaplan's logic of demonstratives, conversational versus utterance context, context-shifting indexicals, the deictic center, token-reflexivity, vagueness of spatial and temporal indexicals, reference rules, and the epistemic and cognitive role of indexicals. From a descriptivist perspective on reference, various examples of simple and complex indexicals are analyzed in first-order predicate logic with reified contexts. A critical discussion of essential indexicality, de se readings of attitudes and accompanying puzzles rounds up the investigation.

"There is currently no comprehensive description of the uses and meanings of the Blackfoot demonstrative stem set am, ann and om and the demonstrative affix set -o, -ma, ­ka, ­ya, and ­hka. Although Blackfoot is an endangered language, there is a substantial Blackfoot textual tradition made up of phonetic transcriptions of traditional oral stories (Uhlenbeck 1912). In this study, I focus my attention on the spatial deictic uses (also called “situational uses” in the literature) and the discourse deictic uses of demonstratives in over 25 stories from Uhlenbeck 1912 and additional data given in Uhlenbeck 1938.
Previous analyses of the demonstrative system by Uhlenbeck (1938), Taylor (1969) and Frantz (1971, 2009) are each part of a larger grammar of Blackfoot and so tend to be superficial in their analyses of the system. For example, all three researchers fail to draw clear distinctions between demonstratives used in spatial or locational deixis and those found in anaphoric or discourse deixis. I set out to carefully determine the type of each demonstrative occurrence in order to analyze each demonstrative category as a distinct part of the system. I follow Himmelmann’s (1996) taxonomy of universal demonstrative uses (albeit cautiously, cf. Diessel 1999) as well as Cleary-Camp’s (2007) clarifications of these categories as my criteria for delineating demonstratives into four categories: situational uses (including both spatial deixis and locational deixis); discourse deictic uses; tracking uses (also called anaphoric uses); and recognitional uses.
My analysis of situational uses is built upon the framework outlined in Imai’s (2003) cross-linguistic study of spatial deixis and informed by the typological demonstrative studies of Dixon (2003) and Diessel (1999). Imai’s approach involves identifying the specific parameters (and their features) that are encoded in demonstrative words. His four parameters are: anchor, spatial demarcation, referent/region configuration and function. I argue that Blackfoot’s situational demonstrative system encodes features of Imai’s first three parameters. The stems am, ann and om, indicate proximal, medial and distal features of spatial demarcation within a speaker-anchored system. The suffix -o encodes a geometric feature of shared space between the speaker and the addressee and the mutually exclusive suffixes  ­ma, ­ka, -ya,and ­hka each encode a different feature of the referent/region configuration parameter, all linked to movement or visibility. I also show how discourse deictic demonstrative occurrences differ from their situational counterparts and how a less exhaustive analysis of the system led previous researchers to incomplete conclusions as a result of their attempts to apply overly general meanings across different categories of demonstrative usage.
This study provides a basic description of Blackfoot demonstratives that (1) may be utilized to elicit more focused, context-specific data from native speakers, (2) has implications for Proulx’s (1988) theory of Proto-Algonquian demonstrative forms and their development (a large portion of which theory is based on modern Blackfoot forms) and (3) is a first step toward a description of the deictic system of Blackfoot.

REFERENCES
Cleary-Camp, Jessica. 2007. Universal uses of demonstratives: Evidence from four Malayo-Polynesian languages. Oceanic Linguistics 46(2):325-347.
Diessel, Holger. 1999. Demonstrativesː Form, function and grammaticalization. Amsterdam: John Benjamins B.V.
Dixon, R. M. W. 2003. Demonstratives: A cross-linguistic typology. Studies in Language 27(1):61-112.
Frantz, Don.  1971. Toward a generative grammar of Blackfoot. Summer Institute of Linguistics Publications in Linguistics and Related Fields #34. Norman, OK.
—. 2009[1991]. Blackfoot grammar, 2nd edition. Toronto, ON: University of Toronto Press.
Himmelmann, Nikolaus. 1996. Demonstratives in narrative discourse: A taxonomy of universal uses. In Studies in Anaphora, ed. by Barbara Fox, 205-54. Typological Studies in Language, 33. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Imai, Shingo. 2003. Spatial deixis. PhD dissertation, SUNY Buffalo.
Proulx, Paul. 1988. The demonstrative pronouns of Proto-Algonquian. International Journal of American Linguistics 54(3):309-330.
Taylor, Allan R. 1969. A Grammar of Blackfoot. Unpublished PhD dissertation, UC Berkeley.
Uhlenbeck, C. C. 1912. A New Series of Blackfoot Texts. Amsterdam.
—. 1938. A Concise Blackfoot Grammar. Amsterdam: North Holland Publishing Company."