1504 Chapter 17 Deixis and anaphora

! Ellipted antecedents
[19] i Now hug each other.
ii Keeping a wary eye on each other, they woo Concordia.
As with reflexives, the antecedent (typically the subject) may be ellipted. In the imperative
[i] we understand you as antecedent, while in [ii] the covert subject of the subordinate
clause is itself anaphorically linked to the following they in the matrix clause.

! Coordination
Reciprocal pronouns can be coordinated with a reflexive or some other NP:
[20] i They no longer respected themselves or each other.
ii You must help not only each other but also your families.

5 Demonstratives

5.1 Preliminaries
! Forms
There are two demonstratives, proximal this and distal that. Both inflect for number:
[1] singular plural
i proximal this these
ii distal that those
! Dependent and independent uses
The demonstratives have both dependent and independent uses, as illustrated in:
[2] i dependent: [This milk]is sour. Where’s [that boy of yours]? [These
two] are mine. Please pass [those knives]. He’s not often
[this late]. It didn’t cost [that much].
ii independent: [All this] is mine. [That]’s not true. Can I have a few of
[those]? His manner was like [that of a schoolmaster].
[Those who broke the law] could expect no leniency.
In the dependent use they function as pre-head determiner or degree modifier; in the
independent use they function as fused determiner-head in NP structure (see Ch. 5,
§§7.1, 9.2).

! Singular independent demonstratives mostly restricted to inanimates

Independent this and that cannot in general be used of humans or animals:
[3] i Those who obtain a score of 90% will win a prize.
∗
ii That who obtains the highest score will win a prize.
iii He/That saved my life.
iv The population of Victoria far exceeds that of Queensland.
∗
v The premier of Victoria will be meeting with that of Queensland.
Those in [i] is understood as denoting a set of people, but the corresponding singular that
in [ii] is inadmissible. In [iii] he and that contrast in animacy, he referring to a person or
 § 5.2 The central deictic use 1505

animal, that to an inanimate. And in the anaphoric cases in [iv–v] that is acceptable with
the interpretation “the population” but not “the premier”. No such restriction applies to
dependent this and that: This guy / That guy saved my life.
This and that can have animate reference, however, when they function as subject of
the verb be:
[4] i This is my husband, Peter.
ii Look over there. Isn’t that your biology tutor?
Such examples normally involve the specifying use of be: we can’t have ∗This isn’t very
well today or ∗That is President.27 Note also that the singular forms are used even when
more than one person is involved: This is Alice and Robert Penfold; That’s your parents
over there.

5.2 The central deictic use

The primary use of the demonstratives is in NPs referring to objects present in the situa-
tion of utterance, with this applying to objects relatively close to the speaker (proximal),
and that to objects relatively distant from the speaker (distal):
[5] i This apple looks riper than that one.
ii Is this yours?
iii What’s that you’re eating?
If the demonstrative NP contains a postmodifier that itself participates in the proximal
vs distal distinction, demonstrative and postmodifier must agree: this book here, those
flowers over there, but not ∗this book there.
What counts as proximal and what as distal is not determined by purely objective
features of spatial location: there may be a subjective element involved. For example, I
might be holding something in my hand and still have a choice between saying What is
this? and What is that? In this context this would be the default choice, but that could
be used to indicate some negative attitude such as disapproval. Or suppose we are in a
department store looking for a jacket: I might refer to one quite close to me, saying How
about this one? or How about that one? One possible factor in the choice could be whether
I am the one wanting to buy (favouring this) or whether you are (favouring that).
Demonstratives can be used deictically not only to pick out physical objects in the
situation of utterance, but also in reference to properties of such objects or to actions
taking place or other abstract features of the situation of utterance:
[6] i I hadn’t expected there to be this much damage. I’ve never seen a computer
this small before. I’m not comfortable like this. Hold your head up like this.
This is what he was doing. When we first travelled with Matthew he was
younger than this.
ii Stop that. I’m looking for something about that size. Don’t look at me like
that / that way. That is not how to do it.
As observed in §1, deictic demonstratives are often accompanied by indexing acts such
as pointing – as in the last example of [i], where the speaker points at the child whose

27
The ascriptive be construction is permitted under certain circumstances with an NP as predicative complement:
That is an extraordinarily tall man over there; This is a beautiful baby.
1506 Chapter 17 Deixis and anaphora

age is compared with Matthew’s. For the use of this in temporal deixis (as in this week,
etc.), see §10.1.2 below.
Demonstratives are also commonly found in discourse deixis (see [26] of §1):
[7] i A: You look about fifteen. B: Is that meant to be a compliment?
ii I hope this conversation isn’t being recorded.
iii Taking the Waltz first, a group of figures that really must be included are Natural
Turn, Closed Change, and Reverse Turn, danced in that order.
In [i] that refers to A’s statement; in [ii] this conversation refers to the one in which the
utterance of this conversation takes place; and in [iii] that order refers to the order in
which the three figures have just been mentioned.

5.3 Anaphoric uses

(a) With NP as antecedent
[8] i There was a glass pane in the front door, and through this he could see into a hallway
where a plump woman with red hair was arranging flowers.
ii I raised some money by hocking the good clothes I had left, but when that was gone
I didn’t have a cent.
iii It appears Tom did most of the damage. That boy’s becoming quite a problem.
iv I bought another copy, but that one was defective too.
v The 1978 Report recommended that a State Plan be adopted to develop 99 public
libraries throughout South Australia over an eight-year period. The development
programme to achieve this State Plan has been highly successful.
A demonstrative NP and its antecedent NP are characteristically coreferential, as in [i–iv];
in [v] a State Plan is non-referential, but we understand that the recommendation was
adopted, so that there does exist an actual plan for the anaphoric NP to refer to. The
demonstratives in [i–ii] are independent, the others dependent. In these dependent cases,
the demonstrative determines a nominal which in [iii] (boy) represents new information;
in [iv] (one) is itself an anaphor with the nominal copy as antecedent; and in [v] (State
Plan) is repeated from the antecedent NP. Note that in [iv] we have one anaphoric link
at the level of nominals between one and copy, and another at the level of NPs between
that one and another copy.
As evident from the examples cited, both this and that can be used anaphorically –
and in general one could be replaced by the other with very little effect on the meaning.
Note that this and that cannot be used contrastively in the anaphoric use as they can in
the deictic use: #I went Christmas shopping and bought a t-shirti and a CD j ; thati is for
Kim, and this j is for Pat. It would be possible to replace the demonstrative NPs in [8]
by personal pronouns, and indeed personal pronouns are very much more commonly
used as anaphors to coreferential NPs than are demonstratives.
The anaphoric and deictic uses of demonstratives are not mutually exclusive:
[9] A: Look at the necklace she’s wearing. B: That’s the one I gave her.
That is here anaphoric to the necklace she’s wearing, but as the necklace is present in the
situation that also has distal deictic force.
 § 5.3 Anaphoric uses 1507

(b) Antecedents with the form of clauses

[10] i Harold would be absent in Salonika for some days; this made the arrangement for
her own timetable much simpler.
ii He discovered that she had slept with several other boyfriends before him. That
shocked him a good deal, and they had a quarrel about it.
iii A fire had just been lighted and things had been set out for drinks, and his response
to these comforts was instantaneous.
iv At first he took no notice of their taunts, but he was soon forced to abandon that
approach.
v He chopped part of Pa’s door down before he stopped. He might not have gone that
far if Pa hadn’t been locked in laughing fit to shake the house.
Except in [v], where that is a degree modifier, the anaphor is an NP, and hence has a
nominalising role. We noted that where the antecedent is an NP, as in [8], independent
demonstratives are less common than personal pronouns, but the reverse is the case here.
While it would be possible in [10i–ii], demonstratives are more likely. Note that [10ii]
contains an anaphoric chain, with that anaphoric to the preceding clause but antecedent
to the following it.

(c) Antecedents with the form of AdjPs or AdvPs

[11] i She was incredibly depressed. In this mood she couldn’t do anything.
ii They had a blue rug, but that isn’t the colour I wanted.
iii They were running very slowly. At that speed they didn’t have a hope of catching the
train.
iv Her skin is brown and so clear. No one in Europe ever had skin that clear.
The anaphor is again an NP except in [iv], and hence has the same kind of nominalising
role as in [10].

(d) Independent demonstratives with nominals as antecedent

While the antecedent of an independent demonstrative can be a full NP, as in [8i–ii] and
[9] above, it can also be just a nominal. There are two subcases to be distinguished, one
involving deictic this and that, the other non-deictic that.
Deictic this and that with nominal antecedents
[12] i [This copy] is clearer than [that].
ii [The wine we had yesterday] was too sweet for my taste but [this] is perfect.
That in [i] and this in [ii] are clearly deictic, referring to entities in the situation of utter-
ance, and with distal and proximal senses respectively. At the same time, however, they
are anaphoric, for we understand “that copy” and “this wine”. We analyse independent
this and that as realising a fusion of determiner and head functions (as explained in Ch. 5,
§9.5), and it is here just the head component that is interpreted anaphorically, as having
the same denotation as the underlined antecedent. These examples thus differ clearly
from independent that in [9], which is also simultaneously deictic and anaphoric. In [9]
the anaphoric relation is between that and the NP the necklace she’s wearing, with the
relation interpreted as coreference; in [12], however, the anaphoric relation is between
that or this (or the head function component of them) and the nominals, or nouns, copy
and wine: there is no anaphoric relation and no coreference between the bracketed NPs.
1508 Chapter 17 Deixis and anaphora

Non-deictic that with nominal antecedent

[13] i Their names weren’t on [the list of the dead], nor on [that of the missing].
ii [The shops in the suburban shopping centres]resemble [those of an English village].
iii [The speech she actually made] was quite different from [that which had been
released to the media].
Again, the antecedent is a nominal rather than a full NP, but this time that lacks the
deictic meaning that it has in [12]. Non-reduced versions of the NPs here would contain
the rather than that: the list of the missing, the shops of an English village, the speech
which had been released to the media. This correlates with the fact that there is no distal–
proximal contrast in the present construction, for this is inadmissible: cf. ∗Their names
weren’t on the list of the dead, nor on this of the missing. In this use, that has been bleached
of its primary distal demonstrative meaning and as far as its determiner function is
concerned it serves as a pure marker of definiteness, like the. The itself is one of the few
determinatives that cannot function as a fused determiner-head (we cannot have ∗Their
names weren’t on the list of the dead, nor on the of the missing, with the interpreted as “the
list”): that in this bleached, non-deictic sense can therefore be regarded as filling this
gap in the system.
In each of the examples in [13] the bracketed NPs are referentially distinct: the list of the
dead and that of the missing refer to distinct lists, and so on. The relation between the NP
containing the antecedent and the one containing that is not always of this kind, however:
[14] i [His image of her] was [that of a woman in her early thirties].
ii Penalties, too, have a more severe impact on [Aboriginal people]. An appreciable
number of [those convicted and fined] go to jail rather than pay the fine.
In [i] there is just one image: the second NP, in predicative complement function,
provides further descriptive information about the referent of the first. In [ii] we have
a subset relation: the second bracketed NP, interpreted as “the Aboriginal people (who
are) convicted and fined”, refers to a subset of Aboriginal people in general.28
Independent demonstratives and the pro-form one
Independent this and that are often equivalent to NPs with the pro-form one as head. An
alternant of [12i], for example, is This copy is clearer than that one, and similarly [13iii]
is equivalent to The speech she actually made was quite different from the one which had
been released to the media. The general relationship between the fused determiner-head
construction and NPs with pro-form one as head is discussed in §6.1 below, but we will
comment briefly here on the special case where the fused determiner-head is that. The main
differences between the present use of that and one are as follows:
[15] i That incorporates a definite determiner.
ii Non-deictic that requires a post-head dependent.
iii That allows a singular non-count antecedent.
Point [i] reiterates our analysis of independent that as representing a fusion of determiner
and head functions; one by contrast functions simply as head and as such combines with

28
Like most fused determiner-heads (see §6.1 below) non-deictic that can take an explicit or implicit partitive:
[The houses on the agent’s list] – or at least [those (of them) that were within our price range] – weren’t big enough
for our needs. Here the full NP the houses on the agent’s list is antecedent, but it is antecedent for the explicit or
implicit partitive.
 § 5.3 Anaphoric uses 1509

separate determiner elements (obligatorily so in the singular). Thus that in [12i] and [13iii]
corresponds not to one alone but to that + one and the + one. As for point [ii], both one and
that, in the uses we are concerned with here, require the presence of a dependent, but while
one allows both pre-head and post-head dependents (e.g. the earlier one, the one from Sydney),
with that it can only be in post-head position.29 Point [iii] is illustrated in:
[16] The crockery reminds me of [that which we used to have in College].
The demonstrative NP here could not be replaced by the one that we used to have in College,
which requires a count antecedent.

! Anticipatory anaphora
This occurs in anticipatory anaphora with a separate, non-integrated antecedent:
[17] i There are still these candidates to interview: Lugton, Barnes, Airey, and Foster.
ii This is what I want you to do: Pick up Sue from the airport (she’s arriving on Qantas
flight 122) and take her to the Astoria Hotel in Brunswick Street . . .
If we replace the anaphor by the antecedent in [i] the anaphor is simply dropped (instead
of switching places with the antecedent), giving There are still Lugton, Barnes, Airey, and
Foster to interview. The length of the antecedent in [ii] makes it an unsuitable replacement
for this, but a shorter expression (such as Pick up Sue at the airport) could occur as subject,
with consequent dropping of this.
Instead of these candidates in [17i] we could have non-anaphoric four candidates. In both
cases the following names serve to identify the candidates, but there is a significant difference
between the two constructions. The indefinite four candidates does not require any further
specification: the names could be omitted without affecting the coherence of the utterance.
But these candidates is definite and its use implies that the referent is identifiable: the following
names provide that identification, and for this reason can be regarded as having the status of
antecedent.
We distinguish between an antecedent and mere elaboration or clarification, although the
boundary is not clear-cut. Compare [17] with, for example:
[18] i The next day he was caned for six for wagging school, but he never told. That was the
good thing about Herbie: no matter what happened to him, he never told.
ii This/That is strange: the door is unlocked.
In [i] no matter what happened to him, he never told clarifies how that is to be interpreted,
but that is nevertheless anaphoric to what precedes and the clarification is not obligatory: we
therefore treat cases like this as ordinary retrospective anaphora. In [ii] the second clause again
clarifies the reference of the demonstrative, but what is strange is something in the situation
of utterance, and hence the demonstrative is deictic; again the clarificatory clause might be
omitted. Note that instead of the second clause we could have I’m sure I locked the door when
I went out: this doesn’t itself say what is strange (and hence couldn’t plausibly be analysed as
an antecedent), but it likewise serves to clarify what is strange about the current situation. It
would seem that there are no cases of distal that that can properly be regarded as involving
anticipatory anaphora.

29 It will be apparent from some of our examples that that permits a somewhat wider range of post-head
dependents than one. Note, for example, that we could not substitute the + one in [13ii] or [14i].
1510 Chapter 17 Deixis and anaphora

5.4 Other uses of the demonstratives

(a) Recognitional uses
[19] i You never wore that scarf I bought you.
ii He’d look at you with those big, brown scowling eyes, and he’d look right into you.
iii It’s time something was done about these blackouts we’ve been having.
iv What’s all this I hear about you and Alex getting into trouble at school?
In the intended contextualisations of these examples, the demonstrative NP refers to an
entity that is not present in the situation of utterance and has not been mentioned in the
preceding discourse, but I assume you can identify it on the basis of specific past shared
experience or knowledge. Such recognitional uses mostly involve dependent that, as in
[i–ii], with the distal element of meaning motivated by the fact that the shared experience
occurred at some time in the past. However, this is also possible, as in [iii–iv], when the
shared grounds for identification are current. The demonstrative cannot stand alone
in this use: some elaboration is needed, normally in the form of a head nominal, as in
[i–iii], or a postmodifier, as in [iv].

(b) False definite dependent this

[20] i %He’s been married and got this half-grown kid.
ii %I was in Penang and I met this man, and he gave me your address and a present
for you.
%
iii She was wearing these enormous earrings that she’d bought at the duty free.
The demonstrative NPs here are false definites in that they have the form of a definite NP
but do not satisfy the conditions for the felicitous use of one. They introduce new entities
into the discourse and do not have sufficient descriptive content to identify the referent
for the addressee. This usage is characteristic of very informal conversation; although
extremely common in that style, there are many speakers who would use indefinite a or
some rather than this in such contexts: hence the ‘% ’ annotation.

(c) That with post-head dependents

[21] i Amy intended to reap [that share of life’s experiences that was her due].
ii She was certainly not one of [those people you could talk with easily].
iii We always prefer [that which is familiar] to [that which is not].
iv The council will show no leniency towards [those who break its laws].
The demonstrative NPs here are again neither deictic nor anaphoric: the dependents
themselves contain sufficient information to identify the referent, so that these are gen-
uine definites. That is dependent in [i–ii], independent in [iii–iv], with the singular in
[iii] inanimate, and plural those in [iv] human. That which is relatively formal, the fused
relative construction being much more usual: compare What he said was nonsense with
the very unlikely That which he said was nonsense. This use, like the anaphoric one with
obligatory dependent illustrated in [13], is restricted to that, which here has little of its
central distal meaning.

(d) That as non-deictic, non-anaphoric degree modifier

[22] i I’m not feeling (all) that well today.
%
ii The movie was that boring I fell asleep.
 § 6 Other types of reduced NP 1511

As degree modifiers of adjectives or adverbs the demonstratives are usually either deictic
(as in I hadn’t expected it to be that big, said as I point at the object in question) or
anaphoric (Kim is 6 foot and Pat is nearly that tall too), but those in [22] do not belong
to either of these types. In [i] the meaning of that (or all that) is roughly “particularly”,
while in [ii] (with a following resultative clause) that is a variant of so; both cases belong
to informal style, and [ii] is predominantly BrE.

6 Other types of reduced NP: pro-nominals, fused heads, and ellipsis

Our main concern in this section will be with NPs headed by the pro-forms one and
other, and with NPs where the head is fused with the determiner or a modifier:
[1] i I asked for a key but he gave me [the wrong one].
ii There are only four cups here: where are [the others]? ! [pro-nominal head]
iii She wanted some bread but we didn’t have [any]. [fused determiner-head]
iv This bus is full: we’ll have to wait for [the next]. [fused modifier-head]
Any in [iii] and the next in [iv] could be replaced by any bread and the next bus, and
hence appear to be elliptical; we argued in Ch. 5, §9.5, however, that an analysis in terms
of ellipsis does not provide a satisfactory general account of this construction, and we
are accordingly saying that any combines the functions of determiner and head, and
similarly that next is here functioning simultaneously as modifier and head.
The pro-nominal and fused-head constructions have it in common that they do not
have a separate head filled by an ordinary noun with inherent lexical content. The in-
terpretation thus generally requires that the content of the head be filled out from the
context. In the examples given in [1] the interpretation is determined anaphorically – as
“the wrong key”, “the other cups”, “any bread”, “the next bus”. We thus refer to the brack-
eted phrases as reduced NPs. They differ from those considered in §§2–4 in that the head
is not a pronoun (recall the distinction between pronoun and pro-form drawn in §1.4),
but we have encountered one case of the fused determiner-head construction in §5, with
the independent demonstratives as fused head. The fused-head and pro-nominal one
constructions are very similar in their uses and are often interchangeable. For this reason
we will consider them together in §6.1, and then return to pro-nominal other in §6.2.
Ellipsis plays a relatively minor role in NP reduction and does not require extended
discussion. It is limited to the omission of post-head dependents, as in
[2] i The plays she directed were more successful than [the musicals ].
ii There were lots of books in the attic, but [the majority ] were trashy novels.
In the salient interpretation of [i] there is ellipsis of the relative clause she directed.
Example [ii] illustrates one of the most common types of ellipsis, that of a partitive
complement (of them).

6.1 Pro-nominal one and the fused-head construction

These two constructions, we have observed, are often interchangeable. Examples of this
kind were noted in our discussion of demonstratives – compare This copy is clearer than