Pashto demonstrative and deictoid pronouns: Anaphora, deixis and pleonasm
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.30842/30346800.2026.2.2.1Keywords:
demonstrative pronouns, deictoids, anaphora, deixis, pleonasm, PashtoAbstract
This article deals with certain classes of pronouns, in particular demonstratives and directionals or deictoids, in Pashto. After a theoretical introduction, I present each of the two categories, first providing a complete inventory of their uses and forms in Pashto, then hypotheses of etymological derivation, and finally a discussion of their functions and semantics, using numerous examples taken from various sources, above all from collections of oral texts. Pashto has two sets of demonstratives, one for proximal — dā ‘this’ and derived forms, and one for distal — (h)ā ‘that’ and derived forms. It also has three deictoids, one for each of the three persons: rā ‘I, we’, dar ‘you’, and war ‘he/she, they’. Demonstratives and deictoids are especially linked to the expression of anaphora and deixis. In particular, the following functions are emphasised for demonstratives: exophoric use, anaphoric use, discourse deictic use and recognitional use. I also identify various functions for deictoids: pronominal, directional and discursive. The latter is particularly illuminating and allows drawing more general conclusions. Specifically, I attribute pleonastic function to the phrase če kəm day, literally ‘which is which’: its use is fully comparable to that of the discursive deictoid rā. This pleonastic use is mainly oral and limited to certain formulae; pleonasm appears to be essentially an oral phenomenon, including in Pashto.
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