All languages have demonstratives, but their form, meaning and use   vary tremendously across the languages of the world. This book presents the first large-  scale analysis of demonstratives from a cross-linguistic and diachronic perspective. The   first part of the book analyzes demonstratives from a synchronic point of view,   examining their morphological structures, semantic features, syntactic functions, and   pragmatic uses in spoken and written discourse. The second part concentrates on   diachronic issues, in particular on the development of demonstratives into grammatical   markers. Across languages demonstratives provide a frequent historical source for   definite articles, relative and third person pronouns, nonverbal copulas, sentence   connectives, directional preverbs, focus markers, expletives, and many other grammatical   markers. The book describes the different mechanisms by which demonstratives   grammaticalize and argues that the evolution of grammatical markers from   demonstratives is crucially distinct from other cases of grammaticalization.

Demonstratives: Form, Function, and Grammaticalization PDF

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