engleski

'Pointing’ by language : demonstratives, articles and (their impact on) the conceptual status of adjectives

The focus of this paper is on the identification of referents by means of demonstratives, articles and adjectives. The work opens with a brief comparison between non- verbal pointing and pointing ‘by language’. This is followed by an outline of traditional vs. cognitive views of articles – the most frequently used linguistic tools for referential specification. Next, we address the methods in which adjectives contribute to referential identification, since in languages without an article system it is indeed adjectives that perform part of the specificatory (identificatory) function (otherwise lexicalized by articles). This analysis of adjectival referential power underpins a study which is presented in the second part of the paper : a free word association task administered to English, Italian and Croatian native speakers. The subjects were tested on lists of bare adjectives on the one hand vs. definite articles + adjectives stimuli on the other (for English and Italian, as article marking languages), and marked vs. unmarked forms of adjectives for Croatian (a language lacking an article system). The main hypothesis is that the bare (i.e. unmarked) adjectival forms will tend to trigger adjectives, whereas the definite article + adjective stimuli will trigger nouns. While the hypothesis is confirmed for central but not peripheral adjectives, the test results go beyond theoretical systematization, into the ‘identificatory’ roles in language, which seem to be hierarchically organized ; from demonstratives, via articles, to adjectives. We propose our results should be read as a linguistic translation of the (various types of the) non-verbal action of pointing.

demonstratives - articles - adjectives - verbal vs. nonverbal pointing - universals - cognitive linguistics

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