SPATIAL DEICTICS IN TIGRINYA

In this chapter, I discuss the morphological, syntactic, and semantic properties of spatial deictic expressions in Tigrinya. Tigrinya uses demonstratives to encode spatial deixis, which can be divided into pronominal forms (e.g., ʔɨzi ‘this’ and ʔɨti ‘that’) and adnominal forms (e.g., ʔɨz- and ʔɨt-). The language’s demonstratives differentiate between proximal and distal references and show gender and number contrasts. I argue that pronominal demonstratives form the basis for spatial deictic expressions in Tigrinya. Additionally, I demonstrate how location adverbs are derived from demonstratives through the locative preposition ab, as in ab=zi-u ‘here’ and ab=ti-u ‘there,’ and how directional adverbs (e.g., nab=zi-u ‘over here’ and kab=ti-u ‘from there’) are created by combining demonstratives with prepositions, specifically nab ‘to(ward)’ and kab ‘from’.