Grammaticalization Of Demonstratives:this/that And Zhè/nà Compared

As one of the most basic and frequently-used word classes in human languages, demonstratives form a grammatical category characteristic of deictic function and distance-scale. Demonstratives mainly reflect the context information through lexical items or grammatical distinctions, and mainly perform syntactic functions and pragmatic functions. The extended use of the pragmatic function of demonstratives often signals the beginning of grammaticalization. With the weakening of the semantic meaning, deictic function, distance-scale and its fixed position in certain syntactic environment, demonstratives gradually develop into a number of grammatical markers, which are often reanalyzed as definite articles, sentence connectives, relative clause markers, complementizers and discourse markers, etc.The thesis endeavors to give a comprehensive description of the pathways, mechanisms, motivations and principles in grammaticalization of this/that and zhè/nà from both diachronic and synchronic perspectives. It will also try to give an explanatory account for the similarities and differences arising in the course of grammaticalization. The main findings are as follows:1) The distal demonstratives nà and that are more inclined to grammaticalize than the proximal demonstratives this and zhè.2) The proximal demonstrative this in English is less grammaticalized than its counterpart zhè in Chinese, for zhè has already evolved into a variety of grammatical categories while this is regarded as a transitional linguistic phenomenon instead of a stable grammaticalized item in morden lanaguges.3) From the syntactic perspective, both pronominal demonstratives and adnominal demonstratives can be served as sources of many grammatical markers.4) From the pragmatic perspective, in both English and Chinese, demonstratives in anaphoric use are more likely to grammaticalize than those in situational use and discourse deictic use.5) This/that and zhè/nà go through different grammaticalization pathways. The adnominal demonstrative this in English has evolved into an indefinite article, and the pronominal demonstratives have grammaticalized into definite articles, relative clause markers, and complementizers. In Chinese, adnominal demonstratives have evolved into definite articles, sentence connectives, relative clause markers, possessive markers and discourse markers. We also find that it is easier for the English pronominal demonstrative to grammaticalize than the adnominal demonstrative, while in Chinese the adnominal demonstrative is more apt to grammaticalize than the pronominal demonstrative.6) In both English and Chinese, the grammaticalization of demonstratives is governed by metaphor and metonymy. In fact, they both involve mappings from the space domain to the temporal domain or from concrete entities to grammaticalized matters, and they eventually grammaticalize into demonstratives of neutral reference. From the perspective of pragmatics and information communication, both Chinese and English demonstratives develop from situational reference to textual reference.The study is believed to bear some theoretical and practical values. Firstly, despite the fact that demonstratives are more highly grammaticalized as compared with content words, they can further grammaticalize into other extended uses. This research on grammaticalization verifies that the language interactive activities at synchronic level are closely related to the diachronic development of the syntactic structures, and that human cognitive activities consistently follow the path from concrete matters to abstract entities. Secondly, this comparative study will hopefully shed some lights on the Chinese-English teaching or English-Chinese translation.