Psychologically distal demonstratives

Abstract

Psychologically distal demonstratives (PDDs) are a phenomenon that has not been noticed in traditional dialectology in the Nordic countries. One reason for this is possibly that they have been confused with the preproprial articles (PPAs, see Johannessen & Garbacz 2014), with which they share some properties. However, recently a number of publications concerning the PDDs have appeared: Johannessen (2006, 2008a, 2008b) and Strahan (2008). The PDD always has the shape of a pronoun, and is preposed to either a name or some other noun phrase denoting a human. The PDD has a special semantics that will be described in section 3. Suffice it to be said here that the psychologically distal demonstrative is used to indicate a psychological, not physical, distance between the person referred to and some other person in the discourse, normally the speaker, but occasionally also the listener. The distance is either relatively neutral, simply implying that the person referred to is unknown to the speaker (or other participant), or even somewhat negative, implying that the speaker is not necessarily very fond of this person. The PDD can be found in Danish, Icelandic, Norwegian, and Swedish. Faroese has not been investigated yet. [...]