Hello and welcome to the Introduction of "TheNess" - a Survey of Definite Markers and Articles and related Demonstrative Forms in World Languages. There are samples of morphology and comments on usage and syntax where possible. Please note I'm working on collecting data to support a hypotheis that many demonstrative and other forms appear to be connected to a proto language K-T pattern, or an older and wider K T N pattern, that includes subject and object markers. However there's plenty of other data of interest to professional and amateur language lovers! For example, in many languages, evidence suggests that Definite Articles and Postpositions appear to have evolved from earlier Demonstrative forms or related Object markers.
Among the diversity of human languages currently spoken around our world there is a persistent semantic pattern of a trinary distinction of demonstratives.
"This"in English corresponds to forms with meanings of here, near me, the speaker. "That" refers to being near you, the listener . "That yonder" places a person or thing far and farther away .
Modern English is actually odd in NOT having a clear trinary distinction between that near and that far in its demonstrative pronoun forms however it does have a set of demonstrative adverbs of place, here and there and other rarer forms like hither and
thither, hence and thence.
Here are the usual semantic distinctions found in various languages.
| Subject | Object Near | Object Far |
| I the speaker | You the Listener | Person or Thing |
| First person | Second Person | Third person |
| "This" or that one | that other near | that other far |
What do I mention a K-T pattern? Definite articles and related demonstrative form occur in the Indo-European and Afro-Asiatic groups of languages, and most other world language families have, if not definite markers, then demonstratives or subject / object markers with deictic functions. These forms are sometimes described as focus markers. (See the section on African languages.) Most of these languages either use a K marker or T marker, which develops into a D or an L in some languages (Arabic and Latin) or have a separate article before nouns or adjectives or mark nouns with suffixes. A minority of languages have S forms which may either derive from T or from an older * K T N pattern.
The radical for these forms which seems to derive from one or more proto-languages, and was perhaps * kwa or *koowa. Further processes of reduction and splitting changed this *K to *H or *W and finally to vowels. (See the Greek section of the IE file. Greek
definite articles have changed from /ho/ /hee/ and /to/ to modern /o/ /i/ and /t/. The T marker and its alternate forms of D and L may have evolved independently as an emphatic feminine that later merged with the *Kwa pattern or there may have been a *kwta form that split into two markers? There is also the possibility more remotely that a wide spread Eurasian language(s) had a final (Consonant) marker that merged with and reinforced imported Indo-European morphologies. This earlier Eurasian proto-language seems to have followed a K T N or K S N pattern. Such a pattern would explain the *D / N pattern of demonstratives in certain East Asian and Austronesian languages. There certainly seems to been a continuous process of reduction that created the modern article forms that have a specific definite only function.
Frankly I was surprised as to how many languages had similar forms or forms that seem to have evolved from a K-T-N pattern including languages that have only very remote historical or geographic associations or lack whereof!
Are humans hard-wired to use and develop demonstratives as a semantic category?
Was there some unknown trading lingua franca or cultural exchange that transferred these forms from language to language? Are the similarity accidents of convergent linguistic evolution or further evidence of a human proto-language?
some of the transliterations I came across are probably not up to IPA standards due to the variety of sources used. I couldn't find formal academic resources for many languages and had to resort to using travel guides or self-instruction
manuals.
Due to the ever-increasing size of the original file, it has been split into shorter sections and separate files. These are links to the new arrangement.
This section includes the Dravidian languages due to their association with the Indic languages and possible influence on Iranian languages. It has been revised once and will be added on to when necessary and I may remove some of the larger tables and change them separate files linked to the page.
Everything I could gather from Ancient Egyptian through to Somali and Iraqw is here. Further data on Chadic languages like Hausa would be most welcome. I also hope to add any relevant or contrasting data from non A-A African language families like Nilo-Saharan or Niger-Congo. Help here is invited and indeed implored as the closest universities and reference libraries to which I have access by public transport do not have extensive collections of African language books.
This section covers the Non I-E languages of Northern Eurasia and includes those two odd isolates Euskara / Basque, Burushashki, along with the Uralic, Altaic, and Caucasian families, and that trio of far east Asian oddities, Japanese, Korean and Ainu. This final grouping I freely admit to borrowing from Ruhlen. If you are wondering what influence he may have had on my researches, the answer is that I have only very recently finally managed to acquire, as an inter-library loan, a copy of his work on Language Origins.
This section contains samples from the Austric, Sinitic (also known as Sino-Tibetan), Daic, Austronesian, and other language families in Asia and the Pacific. I also hope to add any relevant or contrasting data or samples from Amerind or Australian languages. If anyone can recommend texts for individual languages in this group help will be appreciated. Amazon while useful only mentions out of print books if they are recent. Due to the increasing size of the Austronesian section this may be splitting off into a separate file in the next revision of this section.
Deictic and Deixis
This term has the same meaning as demonstrative but is derived from Greek and is favored by some scholars to distinguish it from the Latin derived word Demonstrative used in both older and modern grammars and linguistics texts.
Deictic comes from the word deiktikos and deixis from the future stem of the Greek verb deiknumi which is the source of both words and is equivalent in meaning to Latin monstro the "monstr" in demonstrative . Both mean show, point out or to, prove, or explain. Its ultimate source is that productive Indo-European radical *DIK finger digit hence point with a finger to draw someone's attention to something.
Demonstrative derives from demonstro via demonstrativus. Demonstro itself is a compound of de and monstro which is cognate with moneo and mens. Demonstro is the action of showing clearly and pointing out or at a thing referred to by the pronoun.
Determiners and Definite Articles see my separate article on this topic.
This is a minor revision - October 2006 of the major 2005 revision.
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