Zu den deutschen und italienischen Demonstrativa: dieser und jener versus questo und quello

BOARINI, FRANCESCA

2008-01-01

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Abstract

This work examines meaning and function of German and Italian demonstratives, dieser and jener versus questo and quello. In the main didactic and reference grammars they seem to represent a certain similarity. On the one hand dieser and questo express a referent, which is close to the origo (the deictic centre); on the other hand, jener and quello express a referent which is situated far from the origo. In spite of this, in their concrete use these demonstratives present some considerable differences. In comparison with the Italian quello, jener is not much used in everyday language and seems to be confined to some specific cases, while dieser tends to loose its own meaning in order to correspond either to questo or to quello (Himelmann, 1997, Weinrich, 2003, Ahrenholz 2007). If these differeces in use can be easily motivated by the context situation in the case of the deixis ad oculos (see Vuillaume, 1984), they seem to be rather remarkable in written texts, where they tend to characterise the complex framework of deictic and phorical references within the text (Ahrenholz, 2007). This paper aims to present and discuss the different use of demonstratives in Italian and German referring to concrete examples taken from literary texts and online newspapers.