Deixis of Manner, Quality and Degree: Neglected Subcategories of Demonstratives

Demonstratives are a subclass of deictic expressions, whose reference can only be established relative to a point of orientation (“origo”). More often than not the use of these expressions is accompanied by a pointing or mimicking gesture for the purpose of establishing a joint focus of attention between speaker and addressee(s). The semantic structure of these expressions is a very simple one, comprising as it does only two dimensions of meaning: (a) a deictic dimension strictu sensu, locating a referent in terms of distance, visibility and position relative to a center of orientation and (b) an ontologically dimension, identifying the referent as an entity (human being or object), a location, a direction, a time, etc. Whereas the aforementioned ontological dimensions have been discussed in great detail in both language-specific and cross-linguistic studies (cf. Anderson & Keenan, 1985