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Part of
Reconnecting Form and Meaning: In honour of Kristin Davidse
Edited by Caroline Gentens, Lobke Ghesquière, William B. McGregor and An Van linden
[Studies in Language Companion Series 230] 2023
► pp. 185–207

Chapter 7
Iconicity in spatial deixis

A cross-linguistic study of 180 demonstrative systems

| University of Amsterdam
| Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena
This paper presents a cross-linguistic analysis of iconicity in demonstrative systems. Several previous studies have observed that the stem vowels of demonstratives correlate with the encoding of distance (e.g. Woodworth 1991). Nevertheless, there is little systematic research on iconicity in spatial deixis (but see Johansson & Zlatev 2013). Analyzing data from a sample of 180 languages, we argue that iconicity in demonstrative systems is a multifaceted phenomenon. In addition to demonstratives’ vowels, there are several other formal aspects of demonstratives that are arguably iconic, i.e. tone, vowel lengthening, reduplication, and word length. These results corroborate a growing body of research that emphasizes the importance of iconic motivations for the encoding of meaning and raise new questions for future research.
Keywords: demonstratives, iconicity, spatial deixis
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Language sample and data collection
  • 3.Iconicity and second formant frequency
  • 4.Other types of iconicity
    • 4.1Tone
    • 4.2Vowel lengthening
    • 4.3Reduplication
    • 4.4Word length
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Sample languages
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • Glosses and symbols
  • References
Published online: 10 February 2023
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.230.07bre
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