Abstract
The non-deictic that is known to be a non-obligatory element and thus is said to be often deleted. This does not imply it does not have any semantic value; on the contrary, the non-deictic that may indicate the speaker's attitude or his/her vantage point. This function is derived from the function of the demonstrative that and from the iconicity generated by its phonological shape. The non-deictic that expresses a state of knowledge, fixed belief, inference based upon evidence, conscious mental activity, remote events, public information, old information, indirectness, and formality, whereas the construction without that realizes yet unproven information, groundless hearsay, inference without evidence, new(ly-learned) information, near-by events, directness, immediacy, solidarity, emotion, and informality. This constructional distinction tends to correlate with the structure of mental activity in humans: slow, thought-like analytic processing being complemented by fast, sensation-like holistic processing.
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