UCLA

This dissertation explores, analyzes, and compares the usage of German and Chinese demonstratives. Discourse and textual uses of the forms will be considered as well as their locative and temporal uses. I observe that in both languages the demonstratives can be used to refer to referents. However, they depart from the common assumption that proximal demonstratives refer to entities or places close to the speaker and non-proximal demonstratives to entities or places far from the speaker. Having analyzed a language sample consisting of a German text and a Chinese text, I argue that both German and Chinese proximal demonstratives can signal the meaning of HIGH DEIXIS in a semantic system of DEIXIS in the Columbia School of Linguistics framework, whereas their non-proximal demonstratives can signal the meaning of LOW DEIXIS. In addition, Chinese demonstratives can be used under more circumstances than German demonstratives due to the lack of articles in Chinese. I also argue that Cognitive Linguistic analysis will better help a new language learner, whereas Columbia School Linguistics may be of greater assistance if the learner has advanced to a level where he/she needs to know more about the intrinsic differences between words with similar meanings and usages.