Linguist Forum

Specializations => Morphosyntax => Topic started by: zaba on April 12, 2014, 10:53:13 AM

Title: deictic markers and definiteness
Post by: zaba on April 12, 2014, 10:53:13 AM

What is the relationship between deictic markers (as lexemes) and the marking of definiteness (with any morpheme)? There seems to be a relation in English, "that/those dog/s" (deictic) vs "the dog/s" (definiteness).

Is there some (sort of) cross-language generalization to be made here?

Title: Re: deictic markers and definiteness
Post by: Daniel on April 12, 2014, 11:44:24 AM

Demonstratives (this, that, etc.) often develop into articles. But I'm not aware of any other relationship. Obviously the functions can overlap (such as specificity) but they don't seem equivalent to me.
Basically languages without articles may grammaticalize them from elements that are somewhat similar, such as demostratives.