new title in grammaticalization john benjamins publishing would like to call your attention to the following new title in the field of grammaticalization : demonstratives in interaction the emergence of a definite article in finnish ritva laury ( california state university , fresno ) 1997 . viii , 294 pp . studies in discourse and grammar , 7 us / canada : hb : 1 55619 597 4 price : usd 69 . 00 rest of the world : hb : 90 272 3646 1 price : nlg 178 , - - this book concerns one of the paradigm examples of grammaticalization , the development of a definite article from a demonstrative determiner . although standard written finnish has no articles , the demonstrative se is currently emerging as a definite article in spoken finnish . this book describes and explains the developing use of se based on a database consisting of spoken narratives from three different periods spanning the last one hundred years . the author proposes that the development from demonstrative to article has its roots in the way that speakers ordinarily use demonstratives in conversation , and provides an analysis of the use of se and the two other finnish demonstratives , t \ 228m \ 228 and tuo in a corpus of multi-party conversations , showing that speakers of finnish use demonstratives to focus attention on important referents and to express and negotiate access to them in the interactive context of ongoing talk , and not primarily to talk about how near or far referents are . the development of se into a general marker of identifiability is shown to be connected with both the focusing function of demonstratives as well as its use for referents which the speaker considers accessible to the addressee . - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - bernadette martinez - keck tel : ( 215 ) 836-1200 publicity / marketing fax : ( 215 ) 836-1204 john benjamins north america e-mail : bernie @ benjamins . com po box 27519 philadelphia pa 19118-0519 check out the john benjamins web site : http : / / www . benjamins . com