Determinantes demostrativos en chorote (mataguayo). Interrelación con la modalidad, la temporalidad y la evidencialidad

Abstract

This article examines the demonstrative determinants in Chorote (a language spoken in the Chaco Mataguayo, in Argentina and Paraguay), whose use roughly corresponds to the use of articles and demonstratives in the much better known European languages. Their morphosyntactic and semantic behaviour is described, and the way in which they pragmatically affect the interpretation of the clausal TAM. Among their outstanding features, it should be noted that in addition to spatial distance, they encode many other traits, such as ostensibility, visual evidence and movement of the referent. Moreover they make it possible to infer modal values (including evidentials) and the temporal in the clause. This phenomenon does not occur in Chorote alone, but has also been documented in other languages of the Chaco.