Exploring Hungarian and Dutch gestural demonstratives

This paper examines various hypotheses regarding the choice of Hungarian and Dutch proximal and distal gestural demonstratives, i.e. demonstratives accompanied by a pointing gesture, in an experimental framework. Using the so-called scripted dialogue technique the study demonstrates that there is a significant difference between the choice of gestural demonstratives depending on the nature of context (non-contrastive vs. contrastive). In non-contrastive contexts accessibility as a factor is ruled out, but the traditional factor of distance plays a crucial role. In contrastive contexts the pattern of demonstratives changes, i.e. in contrastive contexts distance as a factor competes with some other factors.