The role of demonstrative determiners in temporal reference

Abstract Demonstrative pronouns are frequently used in time expressions (e.g., these days, that time ). While spatial use of demonstratives has been studied thoroughly, the use of demonstratives in temporal reference has gained little research attention. We investigate the role of Estonian demonstrative pronouns, more specifically determiners, in temporal reference (e.g., see/too päev ‘this/that day’). The results of our corpus study show that the demonstrative see ‘this’ has more varied functions in temporal reference than the demonstrative too ‘that’, which has specialised to refer to past events and occurs mainly in NPs that function as adverbials. Moreover, the semantics of temporal nouns seems to trigger the diverse referential practices of Estonian demNPs with each noun occurring in a slightly different referential, temporal, and morphosyntactic function.