Hindi, Urdu: preferred possessive pronoun when distance is unimportant.

[MonsieurGonzalito]

Friends,

When using possessive pronouns like is_kii, un_kaa, etc., but in a context in which the possessor's distance in relation to the speaker is unimportant, is it my impression, or speakers overwhelmingly choose the distant forms, i.e., us_kaa, un_kii, etc. over the is_, in_ forms?

Is it fair to say that the distant form is kind of the "default" pronominal part, and that is_, in_ is only really used to specifically mark proximity?
Or I am wrong and "un_, us_" versus "in_ is_" are rather equally and randomly utilized?

Thanks in advance for any comment.

 

[yashs21]

Friends,

When using possessive pronouns like is_kii, un_kaa, etc., but in a context in which the possessor's distance in relation to the speaker is unimportant, is it my impression, or speakers overwhelmingly choose the distant forms, i.e., us_kaa, un_kii, etc. over the is_, in_ forms?

Is it fair to say that the distant form is kind of the "default" pronominal part, and that is_, in_ is only really used to specifically mark proximity?
Or I am wrong and "un_, us_" versus "in_ is_" are rather equally and randomly utilized?

Thanks in advance for any comment.

I mostly agree with the observation, and I'll also add that it's not just the possessive forms for which the distant form is a default. In general, "vo"/"us"/"un" all serve as defaults over "ye"/"is"/"in". For example, when someone asks me to translate English sentences with pronouns like he/she/they/his/him/her/their/them, which don't encode spatial information, my first instict is to go with "vo"/"us"/"un". However, I'll add that if someone is right next to you or sufficiently close to you, you *cannot* use the distant forms, even if the distance is unimportant. In that sense, they differ from English pronouns which can be used to refer to people near you.

 

[Qureshpor]

Friends,

When using possessive pronouns like is_kii, un_kaa, etc., but in a context in which the possessor's distance in relation to the speaker is unimportant, is it my impression, or speakers overwhelmingly choose the distant forms, i.e., us_kaa, un_kii, etc. over the is_, in_ forms?

Is it fair to say that the distant form is kind of the "default" pronominal part, and that is_, in_ is only really used to specifically mark proximity?
Or I am wrong and "un_, us_" versus "in_ is_" are rather equally and randomly utilized?

Thanks in advance for any comment.

You ask valid questions. Proximity does play a part in the choice of is/us, in/un but the situation does not seem to be that simple. With regard to Urdu specifically, in the written form, is/us, in/un are invariably not distinguished. How does one know which is the correct option?

I have carried out a small piece of "research", using "diivaan-i-Ghalib", to see if there are any "patterns" in the usage of "is"/"us". I used a copy of the diivaan which was published by "majlis-i-yaadgaar-i-Ghalib, Punjab University, Lahore" at the time of Ghalib's 100th death anniversary. "tahqiiq-i-matan-o-tartiib" was done by Haamid Ali Khan. This is a copy of high quality printing with is/us clearly marked. In places where I had doubts, I compared the ash3aar with two copies compiled by Maulana Ghulam Rasul Mihr.

This small effort on my part is certainly not the last word on this issue. It would be an indication as to how is/us was used by the master poet himself and we can say that this would be a good learning exercise.

I have divided the is/us usage into essentially three divisions.


1) Jis kii laaThii us kii bhains...type. (around 16 examples)


This is the easiest to follow. Let me give you a few examples..

jo yih kahe kih rextah kyoNkih ho rashk-i-Faarsii
guftah-i-Ghalib ek baar paRh ke use sunaa kih yuuN

yih fitnah aadamii kii xaanah-viiraanii ko kyaa kam hai
hue tum dost jis ke, dushman us kaa aasmaaN kyoN ho

One can ofcourse have this this the other way round..."us kii bhains jis kii laaThii".

gunjiinah-i-ma3nii kaa tilism us ko samajhiye
jo lafz kih Ghaalib mire ash3aar meN aave

In this type of construction, one appears to have an exception to the rule. However, you will see that this is not an exception.

Let's look at the following shi3r..

is rang se uThaaii kal us ne asad kii na3sh
dushman bhii jis ko dekh ke Gham-naak ho gaye

Here one would expect "us rang se...". However, here "is rang..." describes the manner. Adverbial constructions do not have "us". Other examples are ...

zindagii jab is shakl se guzarii....

phir is andaaz se bahaar aaii...

is qadr.... (this gives amount)

is saadagii pih kaun nah mar jaae Ghaalib
laRte haiN awr haath meN talvaar bhii nahiiN... (here is gives "kind").


2) Proximity.....the use of "is" ( around 25 examples)


The promimity is not necessarily in distance but how the speaker (the poet) perceives the reality around him. Here "is" is used for physical and non-physical concepts.

i) Non-Physical

pii jis qadr mile, shab-i-mahtaab meN sharaab
is balGhamii mizaaj ko garmii hii raas hai

kii vafaa ham se to Ghair is ko jafaa kahte haiN
hotii aaii hai kih achhoN ko buraa kahte haiN

huii is daur meN mansuub mujh se baadah aashaamii
phir aayaa vuh zamaanah jo jahaaN meN jaam-i-jam nikle

likhte rahe junuuN kii Hikaayaat-i-xuuN-chakaaN
har chand is meN haath hamaare qalam hue (is meN = is likhne meN)

dil-i-naadaaN tujhe hu'aa kyaa hai
aaxir is dard kii davaa kyaa hai

ii) Physical

falak ko dekh ke kartaa huuN us ko yaad asad (here us = maHbuub)
jafaa meN is kii hai andaaz kaar-farmaa kaa (is = falak, kaar-farmaa=maHbuub)

dil-o-jigar meN par-afshaaN jo ek maujah-i-xuuN hai
ham apne za3m meN samjhe hue the is ko dam aage

saa'e kii tarHa saath phireN sarv-o-sanaubar
tuu is qad-i-dil-kash se jo gul-zaar meN aa'e

taa kih maiN jaanuuN kih hai is kii rasaaii vaaN tak
mujh ko detaa hai payaam-i-va3dah-i-diidaar-i-dost (is kii= is Ghair kii..Ghair is mentioned in the previous line)

When the poet talks about himself, "is" is used as in "is KHastah-tan ke paaNv", "is biimaar ko".When he talks about his heart, he says..

tum apne shikve kii baateN nah khod khod ke puuchho
Hazar karo mire dil se kih is meN aag dabii hai


3) Remoteness... the use of "us". Here again, it is not necessarily the distance in time/space, but how the poet perceives the concept. (26 examples and around 50+ for maHbuub)


i) Non-Physical

fanaa ta3liim-i-dars-i-be-xudii huuN us zamaane se
kih majnuuN laam alif likhtaa thaa diivaar-i-dabistaan par

be-talab deN to mazah us meN sivaa miltaa hai (us meN = dene meN)
vuh gadaa, jis ko nah ho xuu-i-savaal, achchhaa hai

bhaage the ham bahut, so us kii sazaa hai yih (us kii = bhaagne kii)
ho kar asiir daabte haiN raah-zan ke paaNv

laag ho to us ko ham samjheN, lagaao
jab nah ho kuchh bhii to dhokaa khaaeN kyaa

Husn-i-mah gar chih ba-hangaam-i-kamaal achchhaa hai
us se meraa mah-i-xurshiid-jamaaal achchhaa hai

kii ham-nafasoN ne asr-i-giryah meN taqriir
achche rahe aap us se magar mujh ko Dubo aa'e (us se = us taqriir se)

ii) Physical

nasiim-i-misr ko kyaa piir-i- kan3aaN kii havaa-xvaahii
use yuusuf kii buu-i-pairahan kii aazmaa'ish hai

jab us ke dekhne ke liye aa'eN baadshaah (us ke = laalah-zaar ke)
logoN meN kyoN numuud nah ho laalah-zaar kii

apnaa nahiiN vuh shevah kih aaraam se baiTheN
us dar pih nahiiN baar to ka3be hii ko ho aa'e (us dar = maHbuub kaa dar)

gar chih hai kis kis buraaii se vale baa iiN hamah
zikr meraa mujh se bihtar hai kih us maHfil meN hai

sham3 bujhtii hai to us meN dhuaaN uThtaa hai
shu3lah-i-3ishq siyah-posh hu'aa mere ba3d

jaan dii, dii huuii usii kii thii (usii kii = xudaa kii)
Haq to yuuN hai kih Haq adaa nah hu'aa

us kii ummat meN huuN maiN, mere raheN kyoN kaam band (us kii = MuHammad kii)
vaaste jis shah ke Ghaalib gunbad-i-be-dar khulaa

Ghaalib nah kar Huzuur meN tuu baar baar 3arz
zaahir hai tiraa Haal sab un par kahe baGhair (un par = bahaadur shaah Zafar)

suxan meN xaamah-i-Ghaalib kii aatish afshaanii
yaqiin hai ham ko bhii, lekin ab us meN dam kyaa hai (us meN = Ghaalib meN)

maiN ne rokaa raat Ghaalib ko va-gar-nah dekhte
us ke sail-i-giryah meN garduuN kaf-i-sailaab thaa (us ke = Ghaalib ke)

diyaa hai dil us ko, bashar hai, kyaa kahiye (us ko = raqiib ko)
hu'aa raqiib to ho, naamah bar hai, kyaa kahiye

qaasid ko apne haath se gardan nah maariye
us kii xataa nahiiN hai, yih meraa qusuur hai (us kii = qaasid kii)

kareN ge kohkan ke Hausale kaa imtiHaaN aaxir
hanoz us xastah ke niiruu-e-tan kii aazmaaish hai (us xastah ke= Farhaad ke)


"us"/"un" is more frequently used for the "maHbuub"..


muHabbat meN nahiiN hai farq jiine awr marne kaa
usii ko dekh kar jeete haiN jis kaafir pih dam nikle

ham ko un se vafaa kii hai ummiid
jo nahiiN jaante vafaa kyaa hai

kii mire qatl ke ba3d us ne jafaa se taubah
haa'e us zuud-pashemaaN kaa pashemaaN honaa

dard-i-dil likhuuN kab tak jaauuN un ko dikhlaa duuN
ungliyaaN figaar apnii xaamah xuuN-chakaaN apnaa....and so on .

I hope this has shed some light on the matter and answers your questions in a small way.

 

[littlepond]

I would say, as far as Hindi is concerned, that it is distance that always plays a role (how can there be no weightage of distance? I am hard pressed to think of a situation when there is no distance in play, except when two things or two people are equidistant from the speaker, in which case it would be a random choice.)

For example:

iskii kyaa aukaat hai - here the object of aukaat is right in front of the speaker, maybe lying at his feet, praying for forgiveness
uskii kyaa aukaat hai - most other situations, as not only the object of aukaat is not in front of eyes, but also the speaker wants to create a further distance between himself, the fine and mighty, and that person of no worth whom he is talking about.

Can you, @MonsieurGonzalito jii, give me any example of a situation where there is no real or perceived/psychological distance involved?

 

[MonsieurGonzalito]

Can you, @MonsieurGonzalito jii, give me any example of a situation where there is no real or perceived/psychological distance involved?

Suppose you are talking about some historical character whom you just mentioned on a previous sentence, and you are using a personal pronoun merely not to repeat his name.

 

[MonsieurGonzalito]

You ask valid questions. Proximity does play a part in the choice of is/us, in/un but the situation does not seem to be that simple. With regard to Urdu specifically, in the written form, is/us, in/un are invariably not distinguished. How does one know which is the correct option?

I have carried out a small piece of "research", using "diivaan-i-Ghalib", to see if there are any "patterns" in the usage of "is"/"us". I used a copy of the diivaan which was published by "majlis-i-yaadgaar-i-Ghalib, Punjab University, Lahore" at the time of Ghalib's 100th death anniversary. "tahqiiq-i-matan-o-tartiib" was done by Haamid Ali Khan. This is a copy of high quality printing with is/us clearly marked. In places where I had doubts, I compared the ash3aar with two copies compiled by Maulana Ghulam Rasul Mihr.

I was also intrigued about this. I naïvely thought that any half-decent Urdu writer would have put the occasional pesh or zer in this case, even in a context where diacritics are not otherwise used.

If that is not the case, I guess my question can be changed to "what goes on in the mind of a profficient Urdu reader when he is reading aloud, finds an اس, and has to make a split-second decision about what spelling to use".

This is an excerpt from today's BBC news, for example:

علاقہ مکین مبین خان کا کہنا ہے کہ مون سون کی حالیہ غیر معمولی بارشوں سے تحصیل برشور توبہ کاکڑی میں کئی کچے مکانات منہدم ہو گئے ہیں اور سینکڑوں ایکڑ پر محیط زرعی اراضی کو شدید نقصان پہنچا ہے۔

میٹھے سیب کے باغات اور انگور اس علاقے کی پہچان ہیں۔

What is the first thing that comes to mind? Of "this area" (I just spoke about)? Or of "that area" (which is generic and objectively detached from the speaker)?

 

[Qureshpor]

What is the first thing that comes to mind? Of "this area" (I just spoke about)? Or of "that area" (which is generic and objectively detached from the speaker)?

Of "this area" (that has just been mentioned and brought close to the reader's mind).

 

[littlepond]

Suppose you are talking about some historical character whom you just mentioned on a previous sentence, and you are using a personal pronoun merely not to repeat his name.

But if it's a historical character, then a vast distance of decades and centuries, if not millennia, applies, so automatically it would mostly be, for example, "unkaa" rather than "inkaa." You could still use the latter, of course, but what you are doing is removing the distance and making the reader feel very intimate with the concerned historical character. And this is indeed done to arrive at such an effect.

So I am still curious if you can think of any situation where distance, proximal or distant, does not apply. I doubt it, for we perceive ourselves to be in a temporal-spatial world.

 

[MonsieurGonzalito]

So I am still curious if you can think of any situation where distance, proximal or distant, does not apply. I doubt it, for we perceive ourselves to be in a temporal-spatial world.

Well, in English people use "he" and "she" all the time, even though the expression "this one", "that one" are available.

 

[littlepond]

Well, in English people use "he" and "she" all the time, even though the expression "this one", "that one" are available.

It seems that your English, yet again, is interfering with Hindi.

 

[MonsieurGonzalito]

It seems that your English, yet again, is interfering with Hindi.

Not really. I am just reacting to your statement that "we all are immersed in time and space" as a way to justify your opinion regarding HU always charging pronouns with distance information.
English speakers live equally immersed in said space-time.

 

[littlepond]

Not really. I am just reacting to your statement that "we all are immersed in time and space" as a way to justify your opinion regarding HU always charging pronouns with distance information.
English speakers live equally immersed in said space-time.

You are misquoting me. I said "we perceive ourselves to be in a temporal-spatial world." Are Westerners, in general, so conscious of that? I doubt that, having lived in the West for several years.

 

[MonsieurGonzalito]

You are misquoting me. I said "we perceive ourselves to be in a temporal-spatial world." Are Westerners, in general, so conscious of that? I doubt that, having lived in the West for several years.

All I am asking, is whether or not the proximity pronouns are the "marked member" in the opposition between distant ad proximal pronouns. In the same way that, for example, in many languages, feminine is the "marked" gender, i.e., the gender that is not the one assumed by default, the one that "needs specification", the one that gets diluted in mixed-gender groups of people, etc.

(BTW, @yashs21 jii's answer in #2 seems to suggest exactly that idea, i.e., that, lacking clarification or specific need to indicate distance, distant pronouns are the "unmarked" member in the opposition, the ones less semantically charged, the ones that one says by default, etc.).

Sorry to be obtuse, but I still don't understand the anthropological connection you are trying to make, about Hindi speakers being especially temporaly-spatially conscious.

Incidentally, what I was asking @Qureshpor -jii in #6 was precisely about the word "اس" (which can be read as /is/ or /us/, since Urdu doesn't normally use vocalic diacritics).
Apparently. in most cases, specifying the adequate distance is so unimportant, that it is seldom done in prose, news, etc, even in cases where the proper pronoun cannot be inferred from the context. So, unless we start considering Urdu speakers as more "Western" than Hindi speakers, this is not anthropological at all. It is simply about the mechanics of the language, IMO.

 

[littlepond]

Proximity is always marked in real life itself, given that very few things or people are close to us while all the rest is distant. In any case, given that you've not understood my answers, there's no point for me to continue.

(As for Urdu, you are talking of the idiosyncratic way Urdu is written. But language is spoken first of all. Writing is merely an attempt to represent what is spoken, and Urdu script, with its lack of maatras, does it poorly. But an Urdu speaker speaks in the same manner as a modern Hindi speaker does: so they are inhabiting the same "anthropological" world.)

 

[aevynn]

There's some relevant discussion in section 8.4 of Prichett's notes, and also briefly at the beginning of section 5.1. In particular:

When using possessive pronouns like is_kii, un_kaa, etc., but in a context in which the possessor's distance in relation to the speaker is unimportant, is it my impression, or speakers overwhelmingly choose the distant forms, i.e., us_kaa, un_kii, etc. over the is_, in_ forms?

In general, "vo"/"us"/"un" all serve as defaults over "ye"/"is"/"in". For example, when someone asks me to translate English sentences with pronouns like he/she/they/his/him/her/their/them, which don't encode spatial information, my first instict is to go with "vo"/"us"/"un"...

Pritchett echoes this sentiment:

​

But what about "he, she, it"? Do you choose at random between yih and vuh? In practice, not at all: ninety percent of the time you use vuh. If you want to say "It's a good book," you say vuh to achchhī kitāb hai, and it sounds neutral; if you say yih instead, it becomes "This is a good book," as though you were holding it in your hand.​

very few things or people are close to us while all the rest is distant.

Pritchett also echoes this sentiment:

​

The yih applies to the part of the universe in your immediate (physical or conceptual) vicinity, and the vuh applies to all the rest of the universe. And just think what a huge disproportion THAT is! (Sorry, couldn't help it, wordplay is in my blood now.)​

With regard to Urdu specifically, in the written form, is/us, in/un are invariably not distinguished.

I wonder if maybe @Qureshpor jii meant to say "not invariably distinguished" instead. Even in my admittedly limited exposure to Urdu writing, I've encountered both prose and poetry where zer and pesh are occasionally marked to distinguish is/in/idhar from us/un/udhar. Pritchett also writes:

​

[zer and pesh] may be indicated ... for certain special cases in which even native speakers may be unsure (for example, idhar versus udhar, is versus us).​

Apparently. in most cases, specifying the adequate distance is so unimportant, that it is seldom done in prose, news, etc, even in cases where the proper pronoun cannot be inferred from the context.

I'd like to add in response to this that the cases in which the choice of pronoun are actually unimportant and ambiguous are rare. Almost always, having even a small amount of knowledge of context is enough to decide which one to use. Sometimes it's situational context (is it something that's perceived as close or far?) that determines the choice, and sometimes it's grammatical context (eg, what @Qureshpor jii called the "jis_kii laaThii us_kii bhaiNs" type constructions in #3). Pritchett, despite being able to easily link to examples from both Ghalib's and Mir's divans, quotes only one example where she feels that اس is actually ambiguous. In the BBC example you quoted in #6, I agree with you that "of that area" is semantically reasonable, but I'm hard pressed to imagine that a native speaker might actually pronounce that اس as us -- UH discourse pragmatics just don't really allow it. I think what I'm getting at here is closely related to the the following things that @yashs21 jii and @littlepond jii said above:

... if someone is right next to you or sufficiently close to you, you *cannot* use the distant forms, even if the distance is unimportant. In that sense, they differ from English pronouns which can be used to refer to people near you.

I am hard pressed to think of a situation when there is no distance in play...

Proximity is always marked in real life itself...

One rarely finds oneself in a linguistic situation where the HU proximal and distinct pronouns are actually interchangeable. Your original question asks about the situation "when distance is unimportant," but it's almost as though the premise of the question is vacuous because distance is almost never perceived to be unimportant the way it can be in English (or Spanish). If you flesh out the details of an actual real-life situation, UH speakers will naturally and consistently tend to use either proximal or the distal pronouns depending on the situation, even if English speakers would in the same situation collapse the proximal/distal distinction and just use he/she/it/they.

(BTW, @yashs21 jii's answer in #2 seems to suggest exactly that idea, i.e., that, lacking clarification or specific need to indicate distance, distant pronouns are the "unmarked" member in the opposition, the ones less semantically charged, the ones that one says by default, etc.).

You might be drawing an overly strong conclusion from @yashs21 jii's answer...? I entirely agree with @yashs21 jii that if someone tells me to translate an English sentence involving he/she/it/they devoid of further context, my first instinct is to go for wo(h), but this is a somewhat contrived situation because the English sentence in isolation isn't fully fleshing out a real-life situation. As @yashs21 jii goes on to point out, if it so happens that the he/she/it/they of the English sentence is referring to something that happens to be close at hand, the HU translation using wo(h) will sound wrong, even though the closeness was apparently not important enough to be indicated in English. In this sense, the wo(h) is not at all "unmarked" for distance in the same way that the English pronouns he/she/it/they are.

 

[littlepond]

How well you have summarised it and threaded it all together, @aevynn jii!

 

[Qureshpor]

and Urdu script, with its lack of maatras, does it poorly.

The "maatras" have been there from the very beginnings of the Urdu script but it is customary not to use the short vowels unless there is a good reason to use them. So, it depicts the spoken language remarkably well and not "poorly"! Do you know the script?

 

[desi4life]

The "maatras" have been there from the very beginnings of the Urdu script but it is customary not to use the short vowels unless there is a good reason to use them.

Also the same character can be used for different long vowels. For example, the character “vaao” can be for the vowels uu, o, au as well as v. Thus, دور in Urdu can mean duur “distant”, dor “twice-ploughed land”, or daur “a round”. One has to use context to determine the appropriate word.

 

[MonsieurGonzalito]

I agree with you that "of that area" is semantically reasonable, but I'm hard pressed to imagine that a native speaker might actually pronounce that اس as us -- UH discourse pragmatics just don't really allow it.

Why? What "discourse pragmatics" are those?

(Below is the Devanagari transliteration, done to the best of my ability, so that Hindi speakers are not at disadvantage. "barshor taubaa kaakaRii" is some sort of administrative division in Pakistan, and Subin Khan is the name of the person interviewed):

इलाक़ा मकीन मुबीन ख़ान का कहना है कि मानसून की हालिया ग़ैर मामूली बारिशों से तहसील बरशोर तौबा काकड़ी में कई कच्चे मकानात मुंहदिम हो गए, और सैंकड़ों एकड़ पर मुहीत ज़रई (agricultural) अराज़ी को शदीद नुक़सान पहुँचा हे.

मीठे सेब के बाग़ात ओर अंगूर [इस, उस] इलाक़े की पहचा हैं.

 

[littlepond]

(Below is the Devanagari transliteration, done to the best of my ability, so that Hindi speakers are not at disadvantage. "barshor taubaa kaakaRii" is some sort of administrative division in Pakistan, and Subin Khan is the name of the person interviewed):

It would be difficult to use "us" for any native Hindi-Urdu speaker in the example you've given. A news anchor or a TV presenter is temporarily immersed in that environment he or she is talking about. How can there be the distance of "us"?

 

[MonsieurGonzalito]

It would be difficult to use "us" for any native Hindi-Urdu speaker in the example you've given. A news anchor or a TV presenter is temporarily immersed in that environment he or she is talking about. How can there be the distance of "us"?

I can understand the idea of deixis. But in this thread one argument and the opposite have been made regarding this.
I could counter that "in this physical world of ours, all except the most close ilaqe are far from us".

So perhaps the first and most obvious consideration in the mind of the speakers is the structure of the speech itself, i.e., "how recently, if at all, the thing has been mentioned". And only then, if that consideration doesn't apply, others come into play such as actual physical distance, level of generality of the statement, psychological distancing due to rejection, etc.

 

[littlepond]

I can understand the idea of deixis. But in this thread one argument and the opposite have been made regarding this.
I could counter that "in this physical world of ours, all except the most close ilaqe are far from us".

So perhaps the first and most obvious consideration in the mind of the speakers is the structure of the speech itself, i.e., "how recently, if at all, the thing has been mentioned". And only then, if that consideration doesn't apply, others come into play such as actual physical distance, level of generality of the statement, psychological distancing due to rejection, etc.

No. It seems that you are not understanding at all the Indian mind, for, after all, this question is not just about the language itself.

A: "sunaa hai, baiNglaur meN ek baar phir bauhat paani bhar gayaa hai."
B: "achchhaa? kyaa bauhat baarish ho gayii thii?"
A: "haan, us ilaaqe meN zyaada baarish honaa to laajmii hai hii, lekin mool muddaa bhrashTaachaar hai."

In the above conversation, "is" is impossible to use.

 

[MonsieurGonzalito]

In the above conversation, "is" is impossible to use.

And why on earth would I want to use "is" there? They are evidently detaching themselves psychologically from Bangalore and objectivizing it, as any decent language would do.
But if that were a long speech, and the subject of Bangalore had been established, and they in a way got fully into to the subject, and psychologically "settled" on it, "cherishing" Bangalore, then they could start using "is" and it wouldn't sound jarring.
Theyre is nothing "quintessentially Indian" in any of that.
In Spanish we would do exactly the same.

In the BBC news article about the rain, the mental scenario is firmy established in that district in question, so by the time we get to decide what demonstrative to use in order to refer to "the zone" there is no need of further "deictic shifts" and other considerations are allowed to play (such as proximity in speech).

The only point that remains contentious in this discussion, is whether or not there would be scenarios in which no evident rules would apply in order to choose a proximity-inflected pronoun. In that regard I am willing to accept your argument that there is always some sort of indication (faint as it might be), and that the idea of a "default", "unmarked" pronoun choice is not conducive.

Instead of thinking about the personal pronouns of English or Spanish, I should be thinking about the demonstrative pronouns in these/those 😋 languages., which also always force you to make a proximity-related choice.

 

[littlepond]

Sigh! Let me try to explain in another way before I quit, because you seem to have apparently made up your mind about it, in spite of native speakers' opinions. In the BBC article, the "is" is of apposition, not demonstration. Such an "is" is used a lot, for example, in biographies or narrations about a great person (or to make someone sound impressive): "aaj ham gaandhiijii kii baat kareNge. inhone ... kiyaa. inhone ... bhi kiyaa.... (and so on)." One could also use "us" ("unhone") throughout, but that would make the person (and his feats) sound less impressive. This "is" is of apposition: it is like you are putting something in relief, that you are exhibiting, showcasing something repeatedly on a tray.

In the Bangalore conversation, even if it were to last for an entire day, it would remain "us." That some topic is known in conversation has little to do with usage of "is" or "us."

 

[aevynn]

What "discourse pragmatics" are those?

Short answer: IDK!

Longer answer: It's a fair question. I don't know what kinds of subtleties are known be involved cross-linguistically in choosing between the demonstratives available in a language, so I don't feel capable of formalizing an interesting rule (or heuristic) about this. (I've never really studied pragmatics...) That being said, you do already have a nice set of examples, and explanations surrounding those examples, in this thread. I also remember making a related observation here. That's even an example of a situation where typical English usage of demonstratives disagrees with typical UH usage (specifically, a situation where UH yahii is most naturally translated to English using "that"). In other words, while the following heuristic you proposed is okay at first pass, you will run into (corner?) cases where it fails:

Instead of thinking about the personal pronouns of English or Spanish, I should be thinking about the demonstrative pronouns in these/those 😋 languages., which also always force you to make a proximity-related choice.

 

[MonsieurGonzalito]

This piece crime news (in Hindi) caught my attention, in view of what was discussed here. (Warning, it is a little depressing).
Relevant excerpt:

... daadii ke pair se chaaNdii kaa kaRaa nikaalte same, vo jaag uThii.

 

[littlepond]

What else is possible except voh in that crime report? (By the way, the article has voh, not vo.)

 

[desi4life]

What else is possible except voh in that crime report? (By the way, the article has voh, not vo.)

I agree, but the article uses the conventional spelling “vah”, not “voh” or “vo” which are informal spellings but the common pronunciation.

 

[Qureshpor]

This piece crime news (in Hindi) caught my attention, in view of what was discussed here. (Warning, it is a little depressing).
Relevant excerpt:

... daadii ke pair se chaaNdii kaa kaRaa nikaalte same, vo jaag uThii.

100 साल की दादी की हत्या करने पर पोते को गिरफ्तार किया गया है। दादी के पैर से चांदी का कड़ा निकालते समय, वह जाग उठी।

I would have expected "ve" and "uThiiN" here.

 

[MonsieurGonzalito]

(By the way, the article has voh, not vo.)

I am reflecting the pronunciation, in which that /ɦ/ doesn't exist. Had I gone completely by Hindi spelling, it should have been "vah". Right next to "vo" there is a "same", which I also didn't spell "samay".
And I did all that in the understanding that the poetic वो as in "वो हवा हो गए" would have been a rarity in this prosaic event.

What else is possible except voh in that crime report?

ye (यह or ये) (as you suggest yourself in #20, about "being immersed in the narration" and such).

 

[littlepond]

I am reflecting the pronunciation, in which that /ɦ/ doesn't exist. Had I gone completely by Hindi spelling, it should have been "vah".

I was not specifying the phonetics, otherwise I would have said "vah/veh." "voh" (or "veh") is as much used as "vo" in pronunciation for a singular person, so there was no need to omit the "h," that's all I meant. But anyway, that is not the topic of discussion of this thread.

ye (यह or ये) (as you suggest yourself in #20, about "being immersed in the narration" and such).

I don't think you understood my earlier response (and some other responses in this thread). As I said, too much interference from other languages you know. "yeh" is not possible by any stretch of imagination in that article: for "yeh" there has to be something happening right where the person is, or there has to be an element of relief, of apposition, of exhibition, none of which is the case. Just as in the weather report you earlier linked to, "us" would be difficult to use, because there, there's the case of an apposition.

 

[MonsieurGonzalito]

BTW, it would seem that, contrary to my initial intuition, proximal demonstrative pronouns are much more frequent than their distant counterparts.

Both in general (assuming conclusions from English can be applied generally) and in Hindi (the article linked uses a text corpus called Emille, which has been parsed to measure precisely this kind of things).

 

[aevynn]

I wonder if part of the skew towards proximal demonstratives that was found in in the paper you've linked us to has to do with the fact that the authors focus specifically on news data (so, for example, the tendency towards "relief" or "exhibition" that @littlepond jii mentions above might be higher?). Several years ago I'd downloaded some data from a corpus of spoken Hindi (possibly from the EMILLE Spoken Corpus, but I apparently didn't record where the data was from...). After seeing your post, I crunched some numbers and found that, on average, out of every 1000 transcribed words, 36.7923 contained a distal demonstrative morpheme (I tried to be exhaustive: वो, वह, वे, वही, उस, उसका, उन्होंने, वहाँ, वहां, वहीं, …) while 33.0430 contained a proximal demonstative morpheme (again, tried to be exhaustive: ये, यह, यही, इसे, इनका, यहाँ, यहां, यहीं, …). Those seem like pretty comparable numbers to me.

 

[MonsieurGonzalito]

It might be. My understanding is that the paper focuses on contexts where an "anaphoric" link can be established (rather than a mere word count), meaning: they were interested only in those instances where the demonstrative pronoun is actually replacing something said previously.
In such a context, it makes sense for proximal pronouns to be abundant, as they selected material where one "builds upon" something said earlier. And also, as you point out, common sense indicates that written language is more paused and orderly and lends itself more to this kind of practice.