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Demonstratives and Visibility: Data from Ticuna and Implications for Theories of Deixis

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2026

Amalia Skilton
Amalia Skilton*
Affiliation:
Cornell University
*
226A Morrill Hall, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853, [amalia.skilton@cornell.edu]
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Abstract

In many Indigenous languages of the Americas, demonstratives are said to encode whether the referent is visible. Some scholars, however, argue that all visibility meanings in demonstratives are epiphenomenal on spatial, epistemic modal, or nonvision evidential content. Drawing on elicitation, experimental data, and corpus data collected in fieldwork, I argue that two demonstratives of Ticuna (isolate; Brazil, Colombia, Peru) do display visibility meanings. These meanings are encoded and concern the SENSE OF VISION—not space, epistemic modality, or nonvisual forms of evidentiality. These findings support a view of demonstrative meaning as grounded in the perceptual capacities of the human body.

Keywords

demonstrativesdeixisevidentialitypragmaticsAmerican languagesAmazonian languagesTicuna language

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
Language , Volume 97 , Issue 4 , December 2021, pp. 793 - 824
Copyright
Copyright © 2021 Linguistic Society of America

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Footnotes

*

This article is dedicated to the memory of Ling Cándido Serra, a Ticuna educator, author, and language activist. One of my first Ticuna teachers, Cándido Serra died of COVID-19 in May 2020. He was only forty-five.

I thank all of the Ticuna speakers who have participated in my research, especially those who contributed data discussed here: Angel Bitancourt Serra, Yaneth Cándido Guerrero, Elvira Coello Guerrero, Marcelo Farías Cayetano, Adriana Farías Gómez, Menris Farías Gómez, Deoclesio Guerrero Gómez, Diandra Rimabaque Witancort, Katia Lucero Salate Cándido, Lilia Witancort Guerrero, Sótil Suárez González, ‘ECP’, and the families in examples 1 and 2. I am especially grateful to Angel Bitancourt Serra for his work transcribing the conversational corpus.

For comments on this work, I thank the Language referees and editors; Pattie Epps, William F. Hanks, Andrew Garrett, Lev Michael, and Line Mikkelsen; and audiences at UC Berkeley, MPI Nijmegen, Leiden University, the 2018 meeting of the Society for the Study of Indigenous Languages of the Americas, and the 2017 meeting of the Australian Linguistic Society.

This research was supported financially by an Oswalt Endangered Languages Grant from the Survey of California and Other Indigenous Languages, and by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. BCS-1741751, Grant No. SMA-1911762, and a Graduate Research Fellowship.

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