Demonstratives in English

There is a lot of confusion between this and it when presenting an article. I use this when I am “presenting” someone to somebody else, when introducing someone to another person or when presenting a discourse, object or seminar. This is part of a family of words known as demonstratives, which are used to show where the article is in relation to the speaker. If I want to use “this”, the object has to be located next to me, so I pick it up and point it out to people. People need to express themselves in relation to where they are and so demonstratives give a better picture of what the relationship is. These words can best be learned as opposites so the person can relate a close object to a distant one. “That” book then would refer to a book that is away from the speaker. The plurals of this and that are “these” and “those” and refer to numerous articles that are next to and far from the speaker respectively. The use of these words should not be confused with it, which is used to relate the identity, or nature of something concrete or abstract as in, “It is cold outside.” All the new speaker has to do is try to put this in the same sentence and he will see that he is not presenting anything.

Words like there and here, are good indicators of where people or objects are too, in relationship to the speaker but in English they are called adverbs of place since they describe the verb, to be, in its auxiliary form. “Here is the book” refers to a book, which is handed to someone, and “there is the book” would refer to one, which is located on a shelf or another location. Obviously, if the object is in motion, then the word used to indicate its place is going to vary. The object can be changed to any one that the person wants to, to indicate where the object is in relation to himself. The student has to know that the auxiliary of be, have or do used after there or here will vary according to the singularity or plurality of the subject.