Introduction

In performing an act of demonstrative reference, as in “that's it” (said pointing), a speaker produces a special kind of relation between himself or herself, an addressee, and the object of the point. One of the main ways in which natural language deictics differ from one another is in the kinds of relations they establish between participants and referential objects, familiar examples being Proximal to Speaker, Visible to Speaker and Addressee, Distal to Speaker, and so forth. Languages clearly differ in the kinds of relational features they encode (Anderson and Keenan 1985, Fillmore 1982, Hanks 1987, 1989), and the determination of these features is a central part of the empirical study of deixis. Beyond the identification of referents however, demonstrative usage mobilizes a number of other relatively well-known functions too. These include ostensive presentations of a referent (Hanks 1984b), predication of identity or location (“There it is,” “That's it”), direction of an addressee's attention (“There! [look!]”), along with other extra-referential effects (Levinson 1983: 89ff; Silverstein 1976). In many, though not all, cases of demonstrative reference, a crucial role is also played by the execution of bodily gestures simultaneous with the utterance, such as pointing, directed gaze, handing the object over, cocking the head or pursing the lips (Sherzer 1973).