Pathways to demonstratives and beyond

Bibliographic Data

ID22024232
AuthorsMarianne Mithun (0000-0003-1215-1597, University of California, Santa Barbara, corresponding author)
Year2025
Volume15
Issue2
Pages176-203
Publication date2025-12-12
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of Historical Linguistics (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 2210-2116 • E-ISSN: 2210-2124
PublisherJohn Benjamins Publishing Company (PUBLISHER • NL)
DOI10.1075/jhl.24022.mit
OpenAlexW4410983899
LanguageEN
References cited9

Demonstratives are generally assumed to be universal, but their diachronic pathways of development are notoriously obscure. If they were completely resistant to change through time, they should match across related languages, apart from regular processes of sound change. Languages of the Iroquoian family all contain demonstratives, as would be expected, but these are not all cognate. Closer examination reveals that they have developed from slightly different sources, but along parallel pathways. Their development has not stopped there, however. Some have evolved further into articles but to varying extents in the different languages. The articles are evolving further into nominalizers, forming both participant and event nominalizations. These nominalizations not only serve as referring expressions but are also coming to function much like dependent clauses in complex sentences

Cognitive science · Linguistics · Language, Discourse, Communication Strategies · Language, Metaphor, and Cognition · Philosophy · Psychology · Syntax, Semantics, Linguistic Variation

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