Spatial deixis in Ashéninka Perené (Arawak)

Semantics, Pragmatics, and Syntax of the Demonstrative Markers =ka, =ra, and =nta

Bibliographic Data

ID4442385
AuthorsElena Mihas (0000-0002-7414-8505)
Year2012
Volume12
Issue1
Pages39-65
Publication date2012-05-10
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueLIAMES Línguas Indígenas Americanas (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1678-0531 • E-ISSN: 2177-7160
PublisherUniversidade Estadual de Campinas (PUBLISHER • BR)
DOI10.20396/liames.v0i12.1482
OpenAlexW2140280413
LanguageID
References cited26

The paper reports on the speaker-oriented demonstrative clitics =ka 'near speaker', =ra 'not in the speaker's interactional space', and =nta 'far from the speaker'. It is shown that in situational (deictic) use, the most relevant criteria for the three-way choice are the referent's spatial contiguity to the speaker, touching or direct contact with the referent, pointing with a hand or chin, and eye gaze. Apart from serving as markers of nominal definiteness, the bound forms are found to be used anaphorically, as well as to introduce new participants and mark 'discourse-new-but-hearer-old' information. The bound forms are also used on the syntactic levels of predication and subordination. On the predication level, =ka, =ra, =nta function either as adverbial locality clitics or modal operators, whereas in clause combining the bound forms occur as subordinating temporal or locative conjunctions

Adverbial · Contiguity · Definiteness · Deixis · Demonstrative · Linguistics · Locative case · Referent · Subordination (linguistics · Categorization, perception, and language · Computer Science · Language, Metaphor, and Cognition · Mathematics · Syntax, Semantics, Linguistic Variation

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