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Different Sources, Same Path—From Addressee-Based Deictics to Markers of Discourse Status

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Dynamics of Language Changes

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Abstract

Saliba-Logea, an Oceanic language of Papua New Guinea, has two types of spatial deictics: directionals and demonstratives, which both make a spatial distinction between speech act participants. The directional suffixes express orientation towards the speaker or the addressee; the demonstratives make a three-way distinction between speaker-proximal, addressee-proximal, and distal reference. This chapter describes the grammaticalization of the addressee-based elements of these two deictic form classes. The addressee-based directional and the addressee-proximal demonstrative show strikingly parallel developments towards markers indicating the discourse status of constituents. This brings further evidence to the fact that the semantics of the source element may be as indicative of a grammaticalization path as the form class to which it belongs.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Commas and full stops indicate pause unit boundaries. In addition to the Leipzig glossing rules the following abbreviations are used: addr, addressee; ana, anaphoric; comp, complementizer; conj, conjunction; interj, interjection; np, noun phrase; obli, obligation, intention; onom, onomatopoetic; pp, postposition; red, reduplication; spkr, speaker; tam, tense, aspect, mood.

  2. 2.

    For this reason the data presented here draws both on corpus data and field notes on observed conversations.

  3. 3.

    While several authors suggest that demonstratives in anaphoric use grammaticalize into definite articles (e.g. Greenberg 1978: 61; Vogel 1993; Frajzyngier 1996: 169; Lehmann 1995), Himmelmann (1996: 243) argues that definite articles grammaticalize from demonstratives in recognitional use and that demonstratives in anaphoric use are the source of third person pronouns. Also see Himmelmann (1997) and Löbner (1985) on the distinction between definite and anaphoric articles.

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Acknowledgements

I would like to thank and acknowledge the Saliba and Logea communities who have supported my research. I also wish to thank  Keith Allan for putting this volume together and  two anonymous reviewers for insightful comments. But my special thanks go to Kate Burridge for being her wonderful self! Example references refer to the texts title and number of intonation units in the archived Saliba-Logea DoBeS corpus: http://dobes.mpi.nl/projects/saliba/.

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  1. Monash University, Melbourne, Australia

    Anna Margetts

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  1. Monash University, Melbourne, VIC, Australia

    Keith Allan

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Margetts, A. (2020). Different Sources, Same Path—From Addressee-Based Deictics to Markers of Discourse Status. In: Allan, K. (eds) Dynamics of Language Changes. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-6430-7_1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-6430-7_1

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