engleski

‘Communication and Grammaticalization. The Case of (Croatian) Demonstratives’

The focus of this paper is on the way in which communicative needs drive the formation and development of grammatical categories. The system used to illustrate and analyse this theoretical position is that of Croatian demonstratives. We investigate the communicative sequence that takes us from the pointing gesture to various types of 'pointing words' (see Diessel, 2006). In final analysis the sequence is put into relation with the referential (identificational), via the modificational (qualificational), to the predicative (informative) segments of language.

demonstratives ; grammaticalization ; universals ; cognitive semantics

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