1.2 The Problem

Demonstratives, for example ‘this’ and ‘that’ in English, are supposed to signal the meaning NEAR and FAR, both in time and space. Accordingly, when looking for the German words for ‘this’ and ‘that,’ one will find words dieser and jener in grammar books respectively. However, current German textbooks (e.g. Vorsprung; Stationen; Deutsch: Na Klar! ) avoid mentioning jener , because it is rarely used in spoken language, sounds archaic, and is used only under special conditions. A combination of article (i.e. der , die or das ), and/or demonstrative adverb (i.e. hier , da and dort etc.), is often used instead. [1] For example:

Hopkins and Jones (1972) summarize the following categories where jener could be used before a noun phrase: 1) followed by a relative clause; 2) known or previously mentioned; 3) followed by time expressions; 4) the noun phrase is further modified by adjectives; 5) meaning “that over there”; 6) fixed phrases and 7) not classified. This summary does not give a clear picture of the use of jener . In the case of a language learner, it is not realistic to consider all the categories before deciding to use jener in the communication. Also, when one only keeps in mind that jener means something FAR, one is not sure when jener can be applied to refer to a particular referent. Hopkins and Jones (1972) provide the following examples: [2]

But not:

Imagine that the sentences in both examples are describing a picture. The describer first gives an introduction of the picture. In the first example, the describer introduces the picture from the west side where there was a church on a hill. In the second example, he/she begins the introduction with a story-telling style and suddenly mentions a church on a hill. Diese ‘this’ can be used in both examples, conveying the meaning that the church which diese is modifying is not the one which has already been mentioned (as in Example 1.4), or is the one the describer is pointing to (as in Example 1.5). In either example, the referent is disconnected from the previous information (i.e. that it is the one on the west side or that it is in a pretty town). Also, the definite article die may precede the noun Kirche ‘church’ in both examples, but in the second example, jene may not be used to mention something FAR in terms of distance. However, a person can argue that this is because the church within the second example is a first-time mention. Then, the question is: what is appropriate to use when we want to refer to something far in distance if jener is not always the choice? More specifically, what exactly does jener mean?

Consider the following examples:

Both sentences instruct which entity in sight (for example, an apple) should be eaten. However, the second sentence is not customary and will confuse the hearer, because the hearer is unable to distinguish which apple the speaker refers to; even if the speaker is stressing the second jenen in the second sentence, the hearer cannot find out which apple is ‘that’ apple and which one is the other ‘that’ apple, unless the speaker is pointing to the apple to which he is referring. In this case, however, the speaker would favor diesen , the proximate-signalling demonstrative, rather than jenen . Consider that, in the first sentence, there may be one apple which is relatively nearer and another which is relatively farther from the speaker. In this instance, how is the speaker able to avoid ambiguity by nature, without differentiating two referents in distance? Moreover, why can jener not be used in such cases? In simple words, why is there a paradoxical phenomenon here: diesen and diesen is not a problem, but jenen and jenen is a problem?

We have posted paradoxes in German in the above passages. In Chinese, however, the demonstratives have different problems from the German demonstratives. According to Wang (1954), the Chinese demonstratives refer to things different in space.

But this does not apply to all situations, such as in the following scene from Qian's 1954 novel Weicheng ‘ Fortress Besieged .’ There are several people sitting at the dinner table. In this scene, both Chao Hsin-mei and Fang Hung-chien were invited to a dinner by Miss Su. Chao Hsin-mei had known Miss Su since their childhood and had loved her. However, Miss Su and Hung-chien were college classmates and had met each other by chance on a ship from France back to China. Miss Su was determined to have Hung-chien as her boyfriend, but the girl that Hung-chien was in love with was Hsiao-fu, Miss Su's cousin. Miss Su wanted to show Hung-chien that she had other men courting her and maybe through this she could change Hung-chien's mind. Hung-chien was not aware of Miss Su's intentions, while Hsin-mei saw Hung-chien as his number one rival and tried his best to blame him in front of Miss Su. Here, Qian employs different demonstratives to refer to Hung-chien and Hsin-mei:

‘Chao Hsin-mei looked smug to begin with, and after hearing Miss Su confirm that Hung-chien indeed came home with her on the same ship, he acted as if Hung-chien had turned into thin air and ignored Hung-chien completely.’ (Qian, 1979, p.54)

Here na ‘that’ refers to Chao Hsin-mei and zhe ‘this’ refers to Fang Hung-chien, but both are at the same table eating. It is thus not reasonable to state that Chao Hsin-mei is farther and Fang Hung-chien is closer. The question is, then: what does zhe and na exactly mean in Chinese? This question will be answered in Chapter 4.

[1] This structure, however, is limited to concrete nouns in the spoken language. An abstract noun, such as Begriff “concept” or Idee “idea,” does not qualify for this structure in light of the fact that abstract nouns do not exist physically and thus cannot be perceived as either near or far from the speaker.

[2] In both the German and the Chinese examples which follow, we will first give the forms of the language under study in the utterance or sentence in question. Under that, we will provide a word-for-word (or morpheme-for-morpheme) gloss. In the case of German, this amount of information will usually be enough for the reader. In the case of Chinese, in contrast, it will sometimes be necessary to add an additional idiomatic English translation. In the final version of the book, the Chinese examples will also be given in the Chinese character-based writing system; but for now, to keep things simple, we will present them only in the Pinyin Romanization.

We should also note that the grammaticality judgments were obtained by asking four native German speakers (UCLA teaching assistants) to rate the examples. The author of this book the source of the grammaticality judgments for Chinese. HYXSXcXuQ5GBcrPsS3b2LvCp+8tO88vZSZ2Fa3zFsDJS++7DAi63NbG1bwfDBJ0c