Abstract

The literature on demonstratives mostly focuses on DPs (demonstrative pronouns and determiners), which denote in the entity domain. However, demonstratives can also belong to other categories and denote in the domains of manners _(she acted like this/like that/thus_), locations (_she was here/there_), degrees (_she was yay tall_), amounts (Russian: _ona vypila stolʲko vody_ ‘she drank that_much water’), qualities (Russian: _ona uže pila takoe vino_ ‘she drank that_kind_of wine’), and even times (_she arrived then_). The problem I address is twofold. How can we define a unified semantics for these expressions that incorporates a single concept of demonstration, yet allows denotations to vary across domains? And how can we make sense of demonstrative feature values such as proximal or distal in domains that have no spatial component, such as degrees or manners? I argue that the solution comes from a generalized application of the familiar phenomenon of deferred reference: all demonstrative reference outside the entity and (possibly) spatial domains is deferred.