Contrastive uses reconsidered: The case of Hungarian exophoric demonstratives

This paper presents the results of an elicitation study that investigated demonstrative selection in Hungarian, in face-to-face conversations restricted to table-top space, in contrastive and non-contrastive situations. Using a puzzle completion task (Shin et al. 2020), the assumption that shared space triggers only proximal demonstratives (Jungbluth 2003) is rejected; relative distance from the speaker is a crucial factor in non-contrastive situations, participants' choice of demonstratives varied depending on the location of the entity being referred to (within easy arm reach, at forced arm reach or beyond reach from the speaker). In contrastive situations, same region and across region contrast were compared. In the former case, distance features of demonstratives become neutral; the distal demonstrative can be used even within easy arm reach, however, in the case of across region contrast, the distal demonstrative retains its distance features; it always refers to the entity that is further away