Presentative (linguistics)

A presentative, or presentational,[1] is a word or a syntactic structure which presents, or introduces, an entity, bringing it to the attention of the addressee. Typically, the entity thus introduced will serve as the topic of the subsequent discourse. For example, the construction with "there" in the following English sentence is a presentative:

There appeared a cat on the window sill.

In French, one of major uses of the words voici and voilà is presentative, as in the following example:

Voici

PRESTT

le

DEF

sceau

seal

de

GEN

Charlemagne.

Charlemagne

Voici le sceau de Charlemagne.

PRESTT DEF seal GEN Charlemagne

'This is the seal of Charlemagne.'[2]

However, the most common presentative in French is the (il) y a formula (from verb avoir ‘have’), as in the following sentence:

ya

PRESTT

un

a

policier

policeman

qui

REL

arrive.

arrives

ya un policier qui arrive.

PRESTT a policeman REL arrives

'There is a policeman who arrives.' [3]

Similarly to French il y a, in Chinese the existential verb yǒu (have) is often used as a presentative to introduce new entities into discourse:

Kàn!

Look

Yǒu

PRESTT

rén

people

tōu

steal

nǐde

your

miànbāo!.

bread.

Kàn! Yǒu rén tōu nǐde miànbāo!.

Look PRESTT people steal your bread.

' Look! There’s someone [who] stole your bread!.' [4]

In Maybrat, a likely language isolate of West Papua, there is a dedicated presentative prefix me- which combines with demonstratives. It contrasts with other prefixes like pe- (forming adverbs, "there") or re- and we- (for attributives, "this man"). This contrast is illustrated in the following three examples with the demonstrative -to, which is used for non-masculine referents close to the speaker:[5]

m-ama

U-come

me-to

PRESTT-DEM

(presentative)

 

m-ama me-to

U-come PRESTT-DEM

'Here she comes.'[6]

y-tien

he-sleep

pe-to

area.ADV-DEM

(adverbial)

 

y-tien pe-to

he-sleep area.ADV-DEM

'He sleeps near here.'[7]

fai

woman

re-to

SPEC-DEM

(attributive)

 

fai re-to

woman SPEC-DEM

'this woman'[8]

Special word order configurations can also be used to introduce foregrounded entities into discourse, that is, to realise a presentational function. This is the case of “inverted” sentences, where the subject of SV(O) languages appears in post-verbal position. In the following spoken Chinese sentence, the agent of the motion verb lái (come), which usually occupies the preverbal position, occurs after the verb because it denotes a discourse-new entity:

Nèi

That

tiān

day

túránjiān

suddenly

ne,

PAUS

lái-le

come-PFV

hǎoxiē-ge

quite.a.few-CL

fēijī.

airplane.

Nèi tiān túránjiān ne, lái-le hǎoxiē-ge fēijī.

That day suddenly PAUS come-PFV quite.a.few-CL airplane.

Lit: ' Suddenly that day, came quite a few airplanes.' [9]

A subtype of inverted sentence is called locative inversion since in many languages the preverbal position is filled with a locative expression. English (especially written English) has this kind of structure:

In a little white house lived two rabbits.[10]

References

  1. Matthews, P. H. (2014). "presentational". The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Linguistics. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-967512-8.
  2. Porhiel, Sylvie (2012). "The presentative voici/voilà – Towards a pragmatic definition". Journal of Pragmatics. 44 (4): 435–452. doi:10.1016/j.pragma.2012.01.001. ISSN 0378-2166.
  3. Lena, Ludovica (2020). "Referent introducing strategies in advanced L2 usage: a bi-directional study on French learners of Chinese and Chinese learners of French". In Ryan J., Crostwaite P. (ed.). Referring in a Second Language. Studies on Reference to Person in a Multilingual World. Routledge. ISBN 978-0-429-2639-72.
  4. Lena 2020, p. 178, ex. 2.
  5. Dol, Philomena Hedwig (2007). A grammar of Maybrat : a language of the Bird's Head Peninsula, Papua province, Indonesia. Pacific Linguistics. Canberra: Australian National University. pp. 103–4. ISBN 978-0-85883-573-3. The glosses here have been simplified.
  6. Dol 2007, p. 103, ex. 230.
  7. Dol 2007, p. 99, ex. 208b.
  8. Dol 2007, p. 99, ex. 206a.
  9. Lena 2020, ex. 21.
  10. Birner, Betty Jean (1994). "Information status and word order: an analysis of English inversion". Language. 2 (70): 233–259.
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