Non-situational demonstrative expressions and the cognitive status of their referents

Abstract

Abstract: This paper deals with non-situational demonstratives as text-deictic units and discusses the degree of activation or cognitive status of their referents under the scope of Gundel, Hedberg & Zacharski’s (1993) Givenness Hierarchy combined with Centering Theory.
In order to determine the cognitive status of the referents of the demonstratives, a narrative corpus consisting of J. M. Barrie’s Peter Pan and two translations of Barrie’s text into Catalan and Spanish is analyzed. Firstly, the situational or non-situational natures of the demonstratives this/these/thus and that/those, and their counterparts in the translations, are determined. Secondly, the cognitive status of the referents of the non-situational demonstratives is discussed.
The analyses show that the demonstratives referring to ‘in focus’ entities are frequent. Moreover, there is no one-to-one correspondence among the demonstratives in the source and the target texts. Both results point to changes in the cognitive status of some referents in the process of translation. These results also lead to conclude that some discourse non-identificational constraints should be taken into account when facing the analysis of demonstratives.

Key words: demonstratives, reference, deixis, anaphora, cognitive status.