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    After demonstratives
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    Nouns can be elided after demonstratives.

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    Nouns can be elided after demonstratives. The proximate demonstrative obligatorily carries a proximate demonstrative interpretation, unlike the distal demonstrative. The distal demonstrative optionally carries a distal interpretation before an elided noun. If it does not have the distal interpretation, it is equivalent to an article, see after definite articles. The pair below illustrates noun ellipsis after a proximate and after a distal demonstrative:

    1
    a. Dat skip is te keap mar dizze ____ yn 'e loads net
    that ship is for sale but this in the hangar not
    That ship is for sale, but this one in the hangar is not
    b. Dit skip is te keap mar dy ____ yn 'e loads net
    this ship is for sale but that in the hangar not
    This ship is for sale, but that one in the hangar is not

    Dutch written language generally requires the demonstrative to agree in gender with its antecedent, and Frisian written language does so under the influence of Dutch, but to a much smaller extent. In spoken language, objects are referred to with common pronouns, regardless of the gender of the antecedent. A minimal pair for spoken and written language is given below:

    2
    a. It skip bûtendoar is te keap mar dy ____ yn 'e loads net
    the ship.NG outside is for sale but it/that.CG in the hangar not
    The ship outside is for sale, but that one in the hangar is not
    b. It skip bûtendoar is te keap mar dat ____ yn 'e loads net
    the ship.NG outside is for sale but it/that.NG in the hangar not
    The ship outside is for sale, but that one in the hangar is not

    Spoken language, both Frisian and Dutch, is characterised by a semantic system of reference. Objects are referred to with common pronouns and demonstratives, whereas situations are referred to with neuter pronouns and demonstratives (Romijn 1996). When there is no noun following the plural distal demonstrative, it usually has the same shape as when there is a following noun: dy that. Occasionally, the form dyen them if encountered. It is rare; it only occurs 69 times in the Frisian Language Corpus of 25 million words. All instances of dyen them refer to humans. A few examples are given below:

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    a. En net ien fan dy-en wurdt forgetten troch God
    and not one of that.PL is forgotten by God
    And not one of them is forgotten by God
    b. Net dat dy-en perfoarst allegear ûnkreas wiene
    not that that.PL indeed all ugly were
    Not that they were actually all ugly

    The plural form of the proximate demonstrative, dizzen these, occurs more often than dyen them, namely 172 times. It need not refer to humans, in fact, it usually does not refer to humans, so testifying to an asymmetry between dyen them and dizzen these:

    4
    a. Dy snuten je samar fol. Dizze-n net!
    those blow you easily full these.PL not
    Those handkerchiefs are easily blown full. These were not!
    b. Dizze-n hiene it fêst mei har sels to rêdden
    these.PL had it surely with them selves to preoccupy
    These were surely worried about themselves
    References
    • Romijn, Kirsten1996Hoe doen we het? Verwijzingen naar linguïstische en cognitieve representaties met het voornaamwoord 'het'AmsterdamP.J. Meertens-Instituut
    About this article
    Author(s): Eric Hoekstra, Joke Weening
    Category: Frisian Syntax
    Keywords: nouns elided after demonstratives
    Version: 1.0, December 2015
    Version history:
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    1.0 Eric Hoekstra, Joke Weening December 2015
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