지시어 ‘this'와 ‘that'의 의미와 용법 분석

Abstract

The aim of this paper is twofold: firstly to look at what demonstratives ‘this' and ‘that' mean, the information they encode, and the effect that the information has, and secondly to sketch a systematic and unified analysis of the various uses of ‘this' and ‘that' within a relevance-theoretic framework. I argue that ‘this' and ‘that' are fundamentally communicative linguistic device used by speakers in order to point their hearers towards the intended referent, since these demonstratives encode procedural information directing the hearer's attention to the referent which is highly accessible in the context. I also argue that ‘this' and ‘that' encode a pro-concept of distance, which needs to be contextually worked out and falls under the scope of the procedure. The information that ‘this' and ‘that' encode forms part of an underspecified linguistic representation needing substantial pragmatic processing to reach propositionality. I argue that the various uses of demonstrative forms can be derived via the relevance-theoretic comprehension procedure as the (pro-)conceptual and procedural meaning interact with the different contexts to yield a wide range of inferential effects.