Semantic domains of demonstratives and articles: A view of deictic referentiality explored on the paradigm of Croatian demonstratives Peter Gärdenfors a,b * , Maja Brala-Vukanovic ´ c a Cognitive Science, Department of Philosophy, Lund University, S-221 00 Lund, Sweden b Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Study (STIAS), Wallenberg Research Centre at Stellenbosch University, Marais Street, Stellenbosch 7600, South Africa c Department of English, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, Rijeka University, Sveučilis ˇ na avenija 4, 51000 Rijeka, Croatia Received 25 December 2016; received in revised form 25 September 2017; accepted 29 October 2017 Available online 27 November 2017 Abstract We argue that the meanings of demonstratives and articles can be analysed in terms of a combination of the spatial domain and a small set of semantic domains. We propose that deictic terms have a ‘fast semantics’ in the sense that they get their meaning in the course of the communicative act, as a result of an interaction between the interlocutors, which ultimately leads to referential anchoring. We focus on the semantics of demonstratives, presenting a case study of the very rich paradigm of Croatian demonstratives. We submit that articles refer to an ‘epistemic’ domain that forms part of the semantic space of the common ground that is built up during a discoursive act. Finally, we compare the semantics of deictic expressions with the specificatory and predicative functions of adjectives. © 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. Keywords: Demonstratives; Articles; Croatian; Cognitive semantics; Pointing; Semantic domain 1. Introduction: demonstratives, articles and fast meaning processes Words are said to be deictic if they have an identifiable semantic meaning but their denotation varies depending on contextual facts such as place, time or speaker. 1 This is in contrast to other word classes where the words have meanings that are less dependent on the context. Gärdenfors (2014) argues that the meanings of many open class words, such as adjectives, verbs and prepositions can be described in terms of regions of a single semantic domain. For example, ‘red’ refers to a region of colour space, ‘push’ to a region of vectors in force space, and ‘near’ to a region of physical space. It has been claimed that deictic expressions require a particular semantic treatment. The main goal in this paper, however, is to argue that the single domain thesis can be extended to deictic mechanisms. In our view, the distinction to be drawn is not between the semantics of deictic and non-deictic expressions, but rather between fast and slow semantic www.elsevier.com/locate/lingua Available online at www.sciencedirect.com ScienceDirect Lingua 201 (2018) 102--118 * Corresponding author at: Cognitive Science, Department of Philosophy, Lund University, S-221 00 Lund, Sweden. E-mail addresses: Peter.Gardenfors@lucs.lu.se (P. Gärdenfors), mbrala@ffri.hr (M. Brala-Vukanovic ´). 1 Bühler (1934) writes that deictic expressions necessarily depend on the speaker. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lingua.2017.10.006 0024-3841/© 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.