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Demonstratives and Definite Articles in Plains Cree

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Demonstratives and Definite Articles in Plains Cree DANIELLE E. CYR York University 1. Introduction It is the usage, in the grammatical description of Algonquian languages, to classify demonstratives within a single formal class, whether their func­ tional role may be that of a demonstrative pronoun, a demonstrative noun- determiner, or a definite article. This is the case with two Eastern Cree lan­ guages spoken in Quebec, Montagnais and James Bay Cree.1 For example for Montagnais Ford and Bacon say (1978:30): "Pour indiquer la possession d'un defini, il suffit de juxtaposer le demonstratif au nom possessif". And for James Bay Cree Vaillancourt (1978:31) says: "La ou le frangais fait us­ age d'un article defini, le cris fait usage d'un demonstratif". The situation seems to be the same for Plains Cree as we find in Wolfart and Carroll (1981:84): "For Cree it has been conventional to group words according to their form rather than their function. We call awa a pronoun even where it is used much like an English article". In other studies (Cyr 1993, and Cyr and Axelsson 1988), I have shown that, in Montagnais, the typology of textual functions and textual frequencies of the demonstratives corresponds more closely to that of definite articles in other article languages than to that of demonstrative noun-determiners. A study of textual data comprising 12,000 words of Montagnais narratives shows in fact that demonstratives are :The research for this paper was partly supported by Research Grant 410- 90-1056 from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, and by the Faculty of Arts of York University. I wish to thank Monica Axelsson for her valuable collaboration in the first steps of this research, Amy Dahlstrom and Matthew Dryer for their encouraging remarks and valuable comments at the 23rd Algonquian Conference, and Yves Goddard and H.C. Wolfart also for their encouraging remarks and for their valuable advice at the 24th Algonquian Conference. I am also indepted to Peter Bakker for his comments on the first draft of this paper and for his helpful suggestions, and to Noel Corbett for his help in turning my habitual "Frenglish" into proper English. 64 / DANIELLE E. CYR 65 systematically preposed to those nouns whose referents are presumed to be known, thus identifiable by both the speaker and the addressee. According to Chafe (1976) a speaker can use a definite expression when she is entitled to assume that the hearer can identify the entity the speaker has in mind. The key term in this definition is the identifiability of the referent by both the speaker and the listener. In Montagnais, the use of definite expressions with identifiable referents is extensive. Definite expressions, in other words preposed demonstratives, occur with all referential definite nouns, proper nouns, unique beings, some abstract nouns and some generic uses of con­ crete nouns, most of possessives (except body parts) and locatives. The use of preposed demonstratives is systematically excluded from indefinite ref­ erence, titles, vocatives, partitives, mass-nouns, noun-complementizers and some direct objects (mainly inanimate). In terms of statistical frequency, the systematic usage of preposed demonstratives in Montagnais is also quite similar to the frequencies of definite articles in article languages. Table 1 shows how Montagnais demonstratives rank when compared with articles in other languages. In this table, the columns in black (DEM) stand for the demonstrative noun determiner and the columns in grey (DEF) stand for the definite article. Finnish (FI) has demonstratives but no definite article. French (FR), Italian (IT), Swedish (SW) and German (GER) have both def­ inite articles and demonstratives. In all of these languages, definite articles and demonstratives present different forms. In Montagnais, as mentioned above, the same forms fulfill both functions. I will return to this question later, but, for the moment it suffices to say that I have counted all preposed demonstratives as DEF and all postposed ones as DEM. This table presents the results of a sample of the statistical frequencies of definite articles and demonstratives in short narrative texts in several languages. What these results tell is that in Finnish, which has no def­ inite articles, demonstratives are used as noun-determiners in only 2% of occurrences; in other words, only 2% of the overall noun-phrases of a text occur together with a demonstrative determiner. In French, around 3% of the noun-phrases occur with a demonstrative determiner, while 40% of all noun-phrases occur with a definite article. As we can see, there is very little difference in the frequencies of demonstratives, whether they belong to a non article language such as Finnish or to an article language such as French. In Italian, 7% of noun-phrases occur with a demonstrative determiner and 43'o% of noun-phrases occur with a definite article. On the one hand, the differ­ ence in frequency between French and Italian definite articles is due to the fact that, unlike French, Italian uses definite articles with most possessive constructions and with more proper nouns than French does. The differ­ ence in frequency between French and Italian demonstratives, on the other 66 PLAINS CREE Table 1 Frequency of definite articles and demonstratives in some article languages DEM DEPART hand, cannot be explained in terms of such syntactic preferences and is prob­ ably due to stylistic and pragmatic factors. In Swedish, the frequencies of demonstrative determiners (7%) and definite articles (50%) are even higher than in French and Italian. One reason for the high frequency of definite articles in Swedish is the fact that, in that language a postposed definite ar­ ticle appears along with the demonstrative in demonstrative noun-phrases. Additionally, in the case where the noun is specified by an adjective, the definite article is both preposed and postposed to the noun. These rules cause a proportional increase in the textual frequency of definite articles in Swedish. German is the language showing the highest textual frequency of definite articles. The reason is that German displays the broadest range of contexts in which definite articles are likely to be used, namely, with months and seasons, with nouns in apposition, to replace a demonstrative or a pos­ sessive determiner, after several verbs expressing change-of-state, ahead of a noun-complimentizer expressing a feeling, and in a great many expres­ sions which do not call for a definite article in languages like English (in der Stadt 'in town', zum Beispiel 'for instance', im Krieg 'at war' etc. Since the morphology of Montagnais demonstrative determiners and definite articles is identical, it is somewhat difficult to distinguish what role the markers are playing. Nevertheless, these similar forms display different syntactic orderings, which may very well reflect different functions. The Montagnais demonstrative may in fact be either preposed to the noun-phrase, or else / DANIELLE E. CYR 67 postposed to it; in a few cases it may even be both preposed and postposed. It is only by checking to see if different textual functions are linked to these different syntactic correlates, and by comparing these functions with those of definite articles and demonstrative noun-determiners in languages having distinct forms for the article and the demonstrative, that we can properly evaluate if there is a semantic/syntactic function linked to preposing and postposing of noun-determiners in Montagnais. In languages which use definite articles, rules for the use of them are always explained in grammars, while rules for the use of demonstrative markers are more often than not left unexplained. This state of affairs may arise because the use of demonstrative noun-determiners is not con­ ditioned by syntactic rules and, only marginally by textual rules. In Gre- visse (1975:402-404) for instance, the only remark concerning the textual use of French demonstrative-determiners is that the demonstrative "is fre­ quently used to indicate that the noun refers to a being or a thing just mentioned or about to be discussed" [my translation]. This is equivalent to the anaphoric-cataphoric use of demonstrative-determiners. Otherwise, the use of demonstratives is described as follows: "demonstratives are used instead of definite articles to draw attention [to an anaphoric referent] by specifying the noun either with a certain emphasis and with meliorative value, or else with a derogatory nuance"; in such use we can interpret the demonstrative as a stylistically marked definite article. The French demon­ strative is also said to be used with "possessive meaning" or "with the value of quel in exclamations marking surprise or indignation". Such uses of the French demonstrative are obviously stylistic features, matters of connota­ tion more than denotation. In narrative texts generally, the first mention of a new referent is in­ troduced either by a proper noun, or by a common noun marked as indef­ inite. The second mention of the same referent usually occurs either with a demonstrative-determiner or a definite article. After the second mention of the same referent, this referent occurs with a definite article and keeps it until the end of the text. Furthermore, it may occasionally happen in the course of the text that a few mentions of a definite referent occur here and there with a demonstrative, especially at the beginning of paragraphs or on the very last mention of the same referent, especially at paragraph boundaries. One illustration of this type of sequence is found in a short story called The Golden Ox Tale (Walls and Walls 1983), in which we find 26 occurrences of the word lake. The sequence of definite articles vs demon­ stratives is entirely typical of narrative texts: 68 PLAINS CREE (1) A long time ago, West Lake was called Golden Ox Lake.
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