Some insights on demonstrative use in Hungarian: results of a controlled-dialogue game
Enikő Pásztorné Tóth · ARGUMENTUM · 2020
The aim of this paper is to collect and examine spontaneous data on Hungarian nominal demonstratives.Taking as a starting point Piwek et al.'s (2008) work on Dutch, conversations between two interlocutors were video recorded in a controlled-dialogue game setting.After a quantitative analysis of the distribution of pragmatic uses of Hungarian demonstratives, two hypotheses regarding the choice of exophoric proximal and distal demonstratives were tested, namely, it was explored whether relative distance from the speaker and mental accessibility influence demonstrative practice.The findings indicate that while relative proximity is a decisive factor, accessibility is not crucial.The paper also offers a detailed investigation of the various pragmatic uses of Hungarian demonstratives with the help of illustrative examples analysed in context.