Preface

This volume explores, analyzes, and compares the usage of German and Chinese demonstratives. Discourse and textual uses of the forms will be considered as well as their locative and temporal uses. I observe that in both languages the demonstratives can be used to refer to referents. However, they depart from the common sense that proximal demonstratives refer to entities or places close to the speaker and non-proximal demonstratives to entities or places far from the speaker. With the result of analyzing a language sample consisting of a German text and a Chinese text, I argue that both German and Chinese proximal demonstratives can signal the meaning of HIGH DEIXIS in a semantic system of DEIXIS in the Columbia School of Linguistics framework, whereas their non-proximal demonstratives the meaning of LOW DEIXIS. In addition, the Chinese demonstratives can be used under more circumstances than the German demonstratives due to the lack of articles in Chinese. I also argue that Cognitive Linguistics analysis will better help a language learner, whereas Columbia School Linguistics may be of greater assistance if the learner has advanced to a level where he/she needs to know more about the most intrinsic differences between words with similar meanings and usages.

Chapter 1 postulates the problems that exist in the German and Chinese demonstrative systems (despite their radical typological differences), and contains earlier works of linguists who extended the study to many other Indo-European languages (as for Latin, see Diver, 2012; for French, Reid, 1977; for Dutch, Kirsner 1979; etc.). In terms of theory, they reflect what is known as Columbia School linguistics, which was founded by William Diver at Columbia University in the 1960s (see Diver, 1969) and then flourished by his graduate students in the second half of the 20 th century. Among them was my Doktorvater ‘Ph.D. advisor’ Professor Robert S. Kirsner. His study of phenomena in the grammar and lexicon of Dutch and his sister language Afrikaans lacks the presence of Generative Grammar (see Chomsky, 1957, 1965) and presents deficiencies of this generative analysis on the Dutch article system and Dutch “flavoring particles” (Kirsner, 2014, p.1).

In Chapter 2 I discuss the nature of demonstratives. This is not limited to German nor Chinese. Demonstratives, similar to articles, pick out referents from other similar or identical entities and, in addition to that, provide information on how distant the referent is located from the speaker. Proximal demonstratives generally refer to entities close to the speaker, while distal demonstratives to ones far from the speaker. It is worth noting that proximal and distal demonstratives may refer to entities at the same place. If so, other factors should be taken into consideration, such as psychological distance (i.e. whether the entity is favored by the speaker).

Columbia School analyses take place in Chapter 3 and Chapter 4. German as an inflecting language with an article system, bears the notion that there are three interlocking systems of semantic oppositions that determine an entity's differentiation: the system of NUMBER, the system of DIFFERENTIATION, and the system of DEIXIS. In the system of NUMBER, whether a noun is singular (signaling ONE) is taken into account; in the system of DIFFERENTIATION, whether the noun is preceded by a definite article, an indefinite article or not preceded; and in the system of DEIXIS, whether there is a proximal or a distal demonstrative is present. In contrast, Chinese does not change word forms according to their different grammar roles (i.e. is isolating) and nor does it have articles. In this case, only the system of DEIXIS plays a role. Note that whether the noun is generic, definite or indefinite is not part of the study. Particularly, in a system of DEIXIS, as the referent is already definite, demonstratives do not describe where the referent is but rather urge the hearer to “seek out and attend to the referent” (Kirsner, 2014, p.1). Also, it should be kept in mind that it is the article not the demonstrative that makes a referent (in)definite and stand out from other entities.

Chapter 5 consists a comparative study of demonstratives in both languages with the assistance of parallel texts. It also contains a summary and conclusions drawn from the studies in this volume. It is shown that German and Chinese demonstratives, though differing from each other morphologically and syntactically, still share many similarities linguistically and extra-linguistically.

Columbia School analysis is a top-down approach and provides relatively sparse meaning to the forms in question with qualitative and quantitative evidence. Cognitive Grammar performs bottom-up researches and shows how messages are processed in reality. It is beneficial to apply both approaches to the same question and gain a more insightful starting point and a full-fledged conclusion. On one hand, Columbia School analysis does not provide explicit meaning for language forms, while Cognitive Grammar is more specific and clear with how messages are processed and under which conditions one form can be utilized; on the other hand, Cognitive Grammar is not able to help advanced language learners with understanding the more intrinsic differences between words or usages (e.g. synonyms etc.), it is then better to turn to Columbia School analysis, which provides a form with its sparse meaning from a native speaker's perspective (Diver, 1969, 1995; Garcia, 1975; Langacker, 1987; Smith, 1987).