Demonstratives

The demonstrative adjectives are the approximate equivalents of English this, that, these, and those. In English there are four forms because there is a difference between singular and plural and a difference between “this near the speaker” and “that away from the speaker”.

Carrier distinguishes human singular, human plural, and non-human in four positions, for a total of twelve forms.

Where English distinguishes singular from plural, Carrier distinguish human singular, human plural, and non-human. The “human” category always includes people and dogs. Other animals may be treated as human if the speaker considers them sufficiently human-like.

Carrier distinguishes things near the speaker, things near the addressee, things away from both, and things far away from both. The English this/these category corresponds to the Carrier “near speaker“ category, but the English that/those category is split into three Carrier categories.

Suppose that in each drawing the man is speaking to the woman. In the first one, since the table is near him, he will refer to it as ndi ludab. In the second one, since it is near the woman, to whom he is speaking, he will refer to it as nyoo ludab. In the third scene, since the table is distant from both of them, he will refer to it as nghun-i ludab. If in the first drawing the woman were speaking, she would refer to the table as nyoo ludab since it is near the person she is speaking to.

If the table were far distant from both, the man would refer to it as yoo'un-i ludab

The demonstrative adjectives precede the noun.

As in English, the demonstrative adjectives all do double duty as pronouns. That is, they may be used with no following noun, as if followed by an inaudible noun meaning “one” or “ones”. For example, instead of saying Nghun-un dune 'ut'en. “That man is working.” you can say Nghun-un 'ut'en. “That one is working.”

The adverb “njan” “here” functions in some ways as an additional member of this set. When the noun refers to a place, njan may be used as a demonstrative adjective modifying it, in place of ndi. njan yun. may be used in place of ndi yun with the meaning of “this land”.

There is, however, an important difference between njan yun and ndi yun. The true demonstratives, such as ndi, have two uses. In one use (what linguists call deictic) they are used to point to physical locations. In this use, ndi refers to something that is physically located near the speaker. In the other use (what linguists call anaphoric) they are used to refer to things previously mentioned in the discourse. In this use, ndi refers to something that is associated with the speaker, not necessarily physically near the speaker. For example, it might refer to an idea that the speaker introduced into the conversation.

Whereas the true demonstratives have both deictic and anaphoric uses, njan has only the deictic use; it always retains its basic meaning of “here”. Thus, njan yun can only refer to the land on which the speaker is located, while ndi yun can refer to some land that is under discussion, which might be quite distant.

Similarly, the adverb “'andit” “now” has a corresponding demonstrative adjective “'andit” corresponding to English “this” when the reference is to time.

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