Deferred reference across categories

Abstract

The literature on demonstratives mostly focuses on DPs (demonstrative pronouns and determiners), which denote in the entity domain. However, demonstratives can also belong to other categories and denote in the domains of manners (she acted like this/like that/thus), locations (she was here/there), degrees (she was yay tall), amounts (Russian: ona vypila stolʲko vody ‘she drank that_much water’), qualities (Russian: ona uže pila takoe vino ‘she drank that_kind_of wine’), and even times (she arrived then). The problem I address is twofold. How can we define a unified semantics for these expressions that incorporates a single concept of demonstration, yet allows denotations to vary across domains? And how can we make sense of demonstrative feature values such as proximal or distal in domains that have no spatial component, such as degrees or manners? I argue that the solution comes from a generalized application of the familiar phenomenon of deferred reference: all demonstrative reference outside the entity and (possibly) spatial domains is deferred.