Temporal constraints in the use of demonstratives in Iberian Spanish
Natural linguistic data show that a close relationship exists among demonstratives and time in Spanish. Such connection appears to be of a pragmatic nature whereby linguistic expressions that encode or denote time license the use of demonstratives under certain conditions.The aforementioned connecti...
| Published in: | Borealis: An International Journal of Hispanic Linguistics |
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| Main Author: | |
| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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Septentrio Academic Publishing
2012-12-01
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://www.ub.uit.no/baser/septentrio/index.php/borealis/article/view/2350 |
| Summary: | Natural linguistic data show that a close relationship exists among demonstratives and time in Spanish. Such connection appears to be of a pragmatic nature whereby linguistic expressions that encode or denote time license the use of demonstratives under certain conditions.The aforementioned connection time-demonstration occurs when speakers employ demonstratives to refer to objects within the textual world (i.e. discourse referents). In this paper I explore the temporal constraints that impose restrictions in the use of demonstratives in Spanish and argue in favor of characterizing the relationship time-demonstration as a discourse deixis phenomenon in close connection with time deixis. The co-referential link that gets established between the distal demonstrative and the temporal expression is formalized and a presuppositional characterization provided for the three demonstratives in their discourse-deictic use. |
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| ISSN: | 1893-3211 |