LINGUIST List 3.62

Wed 22 Jan 1992

Disc: Deictic phonology, Iconicity in Demonstratives

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1. , deictic phonology
2. Matthew Dryer, Iconicity in Demonstratives

In the dialect of Sassari, spoken in the northwest of Sardinia the three
deictics adjectives/pronouns are:

 /kulTu/ = this, the one near me
 /kussu/ = that, the one near you
 /kullu/ = yonder, the one not near either of us.

Notes: 1. /T/ represents the voiceless interdental fricative. (I avoid
 spelling it "culthu" out of respect for the Necronomicon.)

 2. 'Yonder' is good Southern, which had, at least in my youth,
 this fine three way deictic distinction.

 3. These examples do not help the vowel aperture theory, nor are
 they intended to.

For a study of iconicity in demonstratives based on a random sample of
languages, see "Sound symbolism in proximal and distal forms" by Nancy
Woodworth in Linguistics 29: 273-299, published way back in 1991.

Matthew Dryer
SUNY Buffalo