Anaphoric uses of demonstratives in Kina Rutul and Mehweb Dargwa

This study presents the first systematic comparison of anaphoric uses of demonstratives in two East Caucasian languages, Kina Rutul (Lezgic) and Mehweb Dargwa (Dargic). Both languages lack dedicated third-person pronouns and employ demonstratives anaphorically in both pronominal and adnominal positions. Data from thirteen Kina Rutul and nine Mehweb Dargwa Pear Stories show that the default demonstrative (in terms of frequency) differs in the two languages: it is the proximal in Kina Rutul and the distal in Mehweb Dargwa. Demonstratives are found to differ with respect to the discourse prominence of the referent and the number of its previous mentions — that is, whether a demonstrative is used for the second or a subsequent mention of the referent in the text [Kibrik 2011: 363]. The proximal in both languages more often refers to more prominent referents than the medial and the distal. Drawing on Ariel’s [1990] accessibility theory, the study tests whether proximal, medial, and distal demonstratives differ iconically, according to their exophoric semantics, in terms of anaphoric distance [Givón 1983] and referent accessibility. In both languages, the distal demonstrative in adnominal uses, often used for referent reactivation [Kibrik 2011: 413], occurs at greater average anaphoric distances than other demonstratives, supporting an iconic link between its exophoric meaning and anaphoric distance. Pronominal uses, by contrast, show no such correlation. The medial demonstrative, in both its adnominal and pronominal uses, displays similar or even shorter average anaphoric distances than the proximal in both languages, therefore arguing against the hypothesized iconicity link between its exophoric and anaphoric uses.