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In:The Ziggurat of Grammar: In honor of Ur Shlonsky
Edited by Lena Baunaz, Giuliano Bocci and Andrew Nevins
[Language Faculty and Beyond 20] 2025
► pp. 101–117

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Chapter 6
Nǎlǐ nàlǐ — ça, c’est quoi?

A comparative note on that and where

 | Université du Québec à Montréal
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Published online: 13 November 2025
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https://doi.org/10.1075/lfab.20.06leu
Abstract
Function words are often considered morphosyntactically monolithic, and partial formal similarities between them are easily dismissed as (synchronically) accidental, as evidence for decomposition may be sparse within individual languages. Recurrence in unrelated languages of such similarities, however, immediately raises the plausibility of a principled reason thereof, wherein lies the relevance of a comparative approach. This chapter approaches English, French, German, and Mandarin equivalents of ‘here’, ‘there’, ‘where’, ‘this’, and ‘that’ from a comparative perspective, suggesting untraditional hypotheses regarding their morphematic composition, including a suprasegmental definite article in Mandarin and a preposition in English and French ‘that’/‘cela’. Perhaps more importantly, the study reveals that in order to understand the relation of ‘what’ to ‘this’ and ‘that’, one must study the relation of ‘where’ to ‘here’ and ‘there’.
Article outline
  • 1.Morph-eme-by-morph-eme
  • 2.Lost in translation, and found nàlǐ ‘there’
    • 2.1Is that there more definite than this here?
    • 2.2Ça, là is where it’s at
    • 2.3Back to the…
    • 2.4The -yi- ‘one’ boundary between nàge ‘that’ and nàlǐ ‘there’
    • 2.5Looking for commonalities, and finding the one
    • 2.6Addressing the deictic part
    • 2.7Let’s place -re and lǐ
    • 2.8C’est le ton qui fait la musique?
  • 3.Where is there, and what is that
  • 4.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
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