Definiteness, Anaphora and Deixis of Old English Demonstratives

In Old English, there are two types of demonstratives: se-type and þes-type. According to traditional accounts, the se-type demonstratives are used to carry the sense of ‘the’ or ‘that’ while the other pes-type demonstratives have a deictic role expressing ‘this’. The purpose of this article is to investigate the semantic functions of the OE demonstratives with special attention to their semantic properties of definiteness, anaphora and deixis. Investigating the 545 demonstratives found in Beowulf, and employing three semantic features ([±Def, ±Phoric, ±Deict]) to characterize their semantic roles, this article manifests that the primary role of the OE demonstratives is anaphoric ([+Def, +Phoric, -Deict]) and their deictic function ([+Def, -Phoric, +Deict]) is marginal. This paper concentrates on the following points: Is the semantic opposition of the two types of OE demonstratives clear-cut?; What are the main linguistic roles of the two OE demonstratives? Are they deictic or anaphoric?; Are the OE demonstratives considered to be inherently definite?