The Mighty Demonstrative

Until recently, much typological work was necessarily based on comparisons of grammatical descriptions, still a fundamental resource. But as the field has progressed, it has become ever clearer that some aspects of structure emerge best in unscripted speech. In many languages, dependent clauses in complex sentence constructions are formed with demonstratives or their descendants. Examination of speech in Mohawk, an Iroquoian language of northeastern North America, might add detail to our understanding of a pathway of development that might not be obvious from elicited sentences or written materials. In this language, demonstratives are strikingly frequent in speech, often as placeholders while speakers formulate the next idea. Placeholders rarely appear in elicited examples in grammars or written materials, because speakers do not tend to think of them as integral parts of the language on a par with nouns and verbs. But the Mohawk placeholders are even more frequent than their counterparts in many other languages. Their pervasiveness has crystalized into a discourse construction in which speakers put forth one idea followed by a demonstrative in one intonation unit, then add elaboration in the next, often adding information about an argument of the first clause. This construction could be interpreted as equivalent to complement constructions in other languages, but a closer look indicates that it may represent a stage along one pathway of development.