Referential shift potential of demonstrative pronouns – Evidence from text continuation

In this chapter, we explore different discourse functions of two types of German demonstrative pronouns compared to the personal pronoun. Utilising a continuation task, we first demonstrate that personal and demonstrative pronouns refer back to different referents from previous discourse. We then show that anaphoric pronouns can also initiate a referential shift towards a previously less prominent referent in upcoming discourse, and we compare three types of pronouns in this regard. We also demonstrate that the referential shift potential is modulated by context-dependent factors. Furthermore, we present evidence that the two demonstrative pronouns differ in the duration of their discourse structuring capacity in the unfolding text