Jalon Begay, University Of New Mexico
The elusive Navajo demonstrative ’éí
As noted by Young and Morgan (1992) demonstratives with the initial phonemes ‘e-/’é- are derivatives of the locative adverbs ’a- ~ ’aa-: there (close at hand, near the speaker), and ’á- ~ ’áá-: there (invisible-remote from the speaker) plus the relativizing or nominalizing enclitics -ii: the particular one / -í: the one. Therefore, these morphemes ’aii and ’áí via morphophonemics become the demonstratives ‘eii: “there nearby particular one(s)” = that one, those there, and ’éí: “there remote the one(s) = that one, those there (out of sight). Furthermore, the demonstratives could take the particularizing enclitic -dí: the very one(s), as in ‘eiidi - éídi, and the same enclitic could be utilized to be a demonstrative pronoun also, thus -dí plus the relativizing enclitic -ígíí = díígíí: the one(s), the kind, (Y & M, 1992: 931). This descriptive analysis by Young Morgan shows that the demonstrative pronoun ’éí has not only been “resemanticized” from another form, i.e. adverbial locatives ’aa & ’áá (‘there’ locative), but also the development of its diachronic origins are rather inconclusive. Nevertheless, what this study demonstrates is that the demonstrative pronoun has also been semantically extended into other domains of discourse other than being a specific locational deictic. Given the common use of it in natural discourse, the demonstrative pronoun functions as a discourse internal entity such as an anaphora and other grammatical or discourse markers: a connective and identificational in topicalization and, harder to quantify, a cataphora. In other words, there are several layers of co-existing meanings. In particular, I will argue that this demonstrative is not only a pronoun and an adjective but also a demonstrative identifier in certain syntactic situations; however categorially its status as demonstrative pronoun does not change (Deissel, 1999a, 1999b, 1997a, 1997b). In other words, the demonstrative ’éí has a multi-functional use: a sentence connective or linker, pronominal demonstrative, adnominal demonstrative, anaphora, and cataphora i.e. its function and meaning has become more generalized and applicable to larger syntactic usages. Since free and bound (prefixal) third person pronominals are often zero marked, I show that the demonstrative also functions as a pronominal substitute, a type of supplemental mediator.
