| The fundamental contrast between Zhe (this) and Na (that) is that between distance and proximity. The current paper derives from this contrast that the identifiability (definiteness) of Zhe (this) is higher than that of Na (that). Then, based on the basic property of human information processor that it can consciously enhance but not reduce a referent's identifiability, the paper explains a few distributional differences between Zhe (this) and Na (that), especially the dissymmetry of replacement. The paper also discusses some other related issues, such as the different directions of further grammaticalization.
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