Re: triple demonstratives

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Anton Sherwood <bronto@P...> wrote:
J Y S Czhang wrote:
> IRRC Maori or Samoan has demonstratives that indicate spatial
> deiurisis (spelling?), i.e. close to hearer, close to speaker,
> not close to either speaker or hearer.
>     Or am I confusing things up (as I am apt to)? ;)
Well, Italian has that: questo, codesto, quello.

>>
...except codesto (from Latin "ecce tibi istum"! don't you just love
the one-word collapsing that occurs a lot in Latin->Italian? :) is
kind of outdated (read: it's more like southern Italy usage).

A better example would be the Japanese demonstrative prefixes ko-, so-
, and a-, which can be attached to other words for location (koko,
soko, asoko), other words for "X side" (kochira, sochira, achira),
and other words for "X thing" (kore, sore, are).

There's also a question prefix which can be attached similarly to
produce, in the above examples, "where", "which side" and "which
thing", respectively "doko", "dochira" and "dore".

Imperative