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Missing Person: Structure and change in Romance demonstratives

Terenghi, S. (2023). PhD thesis, Utrecht University

Source Bibliography Paper

A demonstrative locates its referent near a discourse atom, the speaker, the hearer, both or neither, and a measure can further class the vectors from that atom by length, so every system has a person core that distance contrasts modify. The classes of lengths partition the region near an atom; Mundari grades each of its terms, Brazilian Portuguese only its non-local term and Satawal only its participant terms; and without a measure the semantics is Harbour's vicinity semantics. Spanish ese has two readings that overlap but differ, as Harbour observes of person- and distance-based medials.

Implementation notes

  • A discourse atom is a participant set: the speaker's region {speaker}, the joint region {speaker, addressee}, the hearer's {addressee} and the others' ∅. A term's anchors are the atoms its person features admit, so a cell of the person partitions of Linglib/Syntax/Category/Pronoun/Demonstrative.lean.
  • The vector lengths are an abstract linear order; the context gives the length of the vector from each atom's region to each referent and the cut-offs r₋ₙ of the lengths, r₋₀ = r the maximal length for NEAR to apply. The paper's offsets n₁ < n₂ are taken as 1 and 2.
  • The first, second and third terms of Mundari and Satawal anchor on the author, hearer and non-participant cells, and the local and non-local terms of Brazilian Portuguese on the participant and non-participant cells; a reinforcer that centres the local term on the speaker or the hearer narrows its anchors, and Satawal's contact term is the innermost class of its person term. The paper describes Mundari's third term as measuring distance from both participants; it anchors on the others' atom, as the non-participant term does throughout.

Errata

  • The classes of vector lengths are bounded by strict inequalities on both sides, which leaves the cut-off lengths themselves in no class; each class here is closed at its lower cut-off.

TODO

  • The change from ternary to binary systems as the loss of the last person feature to enter the derivation, the monotonicity bias, and the Last in–First out principle.
  • The dual-anchor term as two structures, and the reanalysis of the participant feature as a measure.

References

Proximity and distance classes

L88–89
L122–124

Deictic terms

Without a measure, a demonstrative locates its referent as in Harbour's semantics, the vicinity of an anchor being NEAR its participants' atom, whenever every atom it admits is the participants of some referent.

theorem locates_iff_presupL151–164
{D : Type u_2} [LinearOrder D] {E' W P T : Type} [PartialOrder E'] (c : Kaplan.Context W E' P T) (V : Vectors E' D) (dem : DemonstrativeDeterminer) (R : DefiniteDescription.Restrictor E' W) (d : ℕ) (g : Assignment E') (s : W) (h : ∀ a ∈ dem.deixis, ∃ (x : E'), c.participants x = a) :
(DemonstrativeDeterminer.denote R d c {p : E' × E' | V.Near (c.participants p.1) p.2} dem).presup g s ↔ { anchors := dem.deixis, distance := none }.Locates V (g d)

Built from , ,

The paradigms

L185–192

Mundari measures distance from each of its three terms, Brazilian Portuguese only from its non-local term, and Satawal only from its first and second terms.

theorem gradedL211–220
:
(∀ t ∈ [Wordlist.Term.dem1, Wordlist.Term.dem2, Wordlist.Term.dem3], Graded Glottocode.mundari t.anchors) ∧ (Graded Glottocode.brazilianPortuguese Wordlist.Term.nonLocal.anchors ∧ ¬Graded Glottocode.brazilianPortuguese Wordlist.Term.local.anchors) ∧ Graded Glottocode.satawalese Wordlist.Term.dem1.anchors ∧ Graded Glottocode.satawalese Wordlist.Term.dem2.anchors ∧ ¬Graded Glottocode.satawalese Wordlist.Term.dem3.anchors

Built from ,

The dual anchor

L242–245