Demonstratives and the rhetorical structure of discourse

Besides a canonical and extensively studied deictic use, demonstratives contribute to discourse cohesion in various ways. As a consequence of that these elements can be defined as multifunctional cohesion making devices. As pronominal elements, demonstratives help establish referential networks that go beyond the sentence. Thus, they serve to refer to diverse discourse entities such as individuals, events, or even entire fragments of discourse. As discourse deictic and anaphoric elements, demonstratives are not only used to identify entities previously introduced in the discourse, but also cataphorically in a clear presentational use. Last but not least, demonstratives show a wide range of uses as discourse particles that, derived of their basic semantic procedural content, serve to establish various rhetorical relations among the propositional content of discourse.