Speaker attitude and demonstrative choice in Ncane (Beboid)

Abstract

Ncane is an underdocumented Bantoid language, which offers speakers multiple choices for referring to aforementioned participants. Anaphoric reference is usually made through a noun and an accompanying anaphoric demonstrative. Two anaphoric demonstratives are observed in the language and a speaker’s choice of demonstrative often reflects the speaker’s attitude toward the participant. This article presents examples illustrating the expression of various kinds of speaker judgments of participants through the use of anaphoric demonstratives. Accounting for such expression of attitude appears to be lacking in proposed demonstrative typologies like that of Diessel (1999). Therefore, the article concludes with a suggestion for expanding typological categories to address such subjective encoding.

Keywords

• Ncane
• Bantu
• demonstratives
• anaphora