| Summary: | While demonstratives typically signal aspects of the spatial configuration of speech act participants and objects in the speech situation, intersubjective parameters, such as the attentional state of the interlocutor, have recently gained importance in the analysis of such forms. Several systems have been described in which the use of certain forms is conditioned by shared vs. non-shared attention towards a referent. Phenomena of this kind have recently been considered under the notion of ‘engagement’, i.e. the expression of a speaker’s assumptions about the knowledge or attention of their interlocutor (Evans et al. 2018a, b).
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