Based on a database of more than 1,000 subdialects of Chinese, this chapter demonstrates that the distal demonstratives in these subdialects are phonologically derived from their corresponding proximal demonstratives, which were themselves grammaticalized from classifiers in Late Middle Chinese. This finding identifies a new type of mechanism leading to the emergence of grammatical items: within a pair of two closely related grammatical elements, the basic and unmarked member originates from a lexical source, and gives rise to the other member through certain phonological principles. The domain of demonstratives thus illustrates how processes of grammaticalization and phonological derivation can interact, giving rise to the emergence of new grammatical forms.

Chapter 7 presents a context-based unitary analysis of demonstratives in English. Existing work reveals a wide and disparate range of effects associated with choice of demonstrative, and in this chapter, it is argued that these various and wide-ranging communicated effects are derived pragmatically. Procedures are proposed for both the proximal and distal demonstrative determiners, and a range of examples are discussed. It is argued that all of the identified uses and functions of demonstratives derive from the same underlying procedures, and that these procedures can interact with the discourse context to create effects that go beyond simply resolving reference. Examples from advertising and political discourse are discussed along with literary examples, and a range of stylistic effects are identified and explained on the procedural, relevance-based analysis.