Forker Diana
Department of Caucasus Studies, Friedrich-Schiller University of Jena, Jena, Germany.
Front Psychol. 2020 Jul 30;11:1712. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2020.01712. eCollection 2020.
In this paper I study semantic and pragmatic properties of elevational demonstratives by means of a typological investigation of 50 languages with elevational demonstratives from all across the globe. The four basic verticality values expressed by elevational demonstratives are UP, DOWN, LEVEL, and ACROSS. They can be ordered along the elevational hierarchy (UP/DOWN > LEVEL/ACROSS), which reflects cross-linguistic tendencies in the expression of these values by demonstratives. Elevational values are frequently co-expressed with distance-based meanings of demonstratives, and it is almost always distal demonstratives that express elevation, whereas medial or proximal demonstratives can lack elevational distinctions. This means that elevational demonstratives largely refer to areas outside the peripersonal sphere in a similar way as simple distal demonstratives. In the proximal domain, fine grained semantic distinctions such as those encoded by elevational demonstratives are superfluous since this domain is accessible to the interlocutors who in the default case of a normal conversation are located in close proximity to each other. I then discuss metaphorical extensions of elevational demonstratives to non-spatial uses such as temporal and social deixis. There are a few languages in which elevational demonstratives with the meaning UP express the temporal meaning future, whereas the DOWN demonstratives encode past. This finding is particularly interesting in view of the widely-debated use of Mandarin Chinese spatial terms 'up' for past events and 'down' for future events, which show the opposite metaphorical extension. I finally examine areal tendencies and potential correlations between elevational demonstratives and the geographical location of speech communities in mountainous areas such as the Himalayas, the Papuan Highlands and the Caucasus. I tentatively conclude that languages spoken in similar topographic environments do not tend to have similar systems of elevational demonstratives if they belong to different language families.
在本文中，我通过对全球50种带有海拔指示词的语言进行类型学研究，探讨了海拔指示词的语义和语用属性。海拔指示词所表达的四个基本垂直性值为“上”“下”“平”和“跨”。它们可以按照海拔层级排序（“上/下”＞“平/跨”），这反映了指示词在表达这些值时的跨语言趋势。海拔值经常与指示词基于距离的含义共同表达，并且几乎总是远指指示词表达海拔，而中指或近指指示词可能缺乏海拔区分。这意味着海拔指示词在很大程度上以与简单远指指示词类似的方式指代个人周边空间之外的区域。在近指领域，像海拔指示词所编码的那种精细语义区分是多余的，因为在正常对话的默认情况下，这个领域对彼此距离很近的对话者来说是可及的。然后我讨论了海拔指示词向非空间用法的隐喻扩展，如时间和社会指示。有一些语言中，意思为“上”的海拔指示词表达“未来”的时间意义，而意思为“下”的指示词编码“过去”。鉴于汉语普通话中用空间词“上”表示过去事件、用“下”表示未来事件这种广受争议的用法呈现出相反的隐喻扩展，这一发现尤其有趣。我最后考察了海拔指示词与喜马拉雅山脉、巴布亚高地和高加索等山区言语社区地理位置之间的区域倾向和潜在关联。我初步得出结论，如果属于不同语系，在相似地形环境中说的语言往往不会有相似的海拔指示词系统。
