|
The English demonstrative pronouns express a simple distance contrast. They indicate the relative distance between the speaker and the referent. this denotes a referent in relative proximity to the speaker and that denotes a referent at a greater distance. it roughly refers to an object which is out of sight.
Turkish has a three-way (bu – şu – o) demonstrative system which obligatorily encodes both distance contrasts and absence or presence of the addressee’s visual attention on the referent. The listener’s point of view is the thing that makes choosing between Turkish demonstratives often difficult for English speakers. The following describes how a Turk chooses between o and şu:
For example, imagine a dinner with two people, where one of them needs to refer to a glass away from her on the table. In English the speaker could say ‘could you pass me that glass? ’ since the glass is away from where she is sitting. However, in Turkish, depending on the addressee’s visual attention on the referent, the speaker would use “şu” if the addressee’s visual attention is away from the glass (e.g. when she is concentrated on the food), but use “o”, that is the distal form, if the addressee’s attention is directed towards or presumed to be on the referent. (Küntay& Özyürek 2003, http://home.ku.edu.tr/~akuntay/KuntayOzyurek.pdf)
bu is used for proximal and o for distal referents. şu is neutral with regard to distance specifications. If the listener’s eye-gaze is not on the referent the speaker is more likely to use şu instead of bu or o. In short, şu overcomes both bu and o if the addressee does not look at the object.
It’s not so easy. According to research 6-year old Turkish children do not master adult-like use of demonstratives yet.
In conversation and written language, a good rule of thumb is that bu means ‘the one that has just been mentioned’ and şu means ‘the following’ (Lewis 1969.):
Bunları boşver.
Etkili bir dinleme için şunları yapın:…
|
