<it> vs <this>

[jcb]

In reply to "Who hit the ball ?", one could answer :
(a) John did.
(b) That guy did. (pointing at John)
(c) He did. (pointing at John)

And in reply to "What did John hit the ball with ?", one could answer :
(c) The bat.
(d) That. (pointing at the bat)
but one could not say:
(e) *It. (pointing at the bat)

I'm not sure how to describe this distinction. Is it simply that <he> and <she> can be used as demonstratives, and <it> can't ? Maybe I'm confused only because <he> and <she> are not normally described/taught as demonstratives ?

Do other languages have this distinction ?

[bradrn]

Do other languages have this distinction ?

Many do, but not all. Some have a single word covering both ‘it’ and ‘this’: e.g. Basque, Marathi and Buryat. Such languages are called ‘two-person’, as opposed to ‘three-person’ languages like English.

[hwhatting]

German works basically like English in this regard; es is used as personal pronoun, but not for pointing out, where you nomally use das and compounds with da- (e.g. damit "with this / that").

[Kuchigakatai]

In reply to "Who hit the ball ?", one could answer :
(a) John did.
(b) That guy did. (pointing at John)
(c) He did. (pointing at John)

And in reply to "What did John hit the ball with ?", one could answer :
(c) The bat.
(d) That. (pointing at the bat)
but one could not say:
(e) *It. (pointing at the bat)

I'm not sure how to describe this distinction. Is it simply that <he> and <she> can be used as demonstratives, and <it> can't ? Maybe I'm confused only because <he> and <she> are not normally described/taught as demonstratives ?

Do other languages have this distinction ?

Note that the first question can also be answered with "John", "That guy" and "Him".

Spanish is rather like English, but note we don't have a distinct "it" pronoun. Rather, él and ella (he/she) are simply strongly animate (in this context). (I think there are other syntactic contexts where él/ella can refer to inanimates...)

¿Quién golpeó la pelota?
1) John. John lo hizo. (John. John did it.)
2) Ese tipo. Ese tipo lo hizo. (That guy. That guy did it.)
3) Él. Él la golpeó. Él lo hizo. (Him. He hit it. He did.)

¿Con qué golpeó John la pelota?
1) Con el bate. (With the bat.)
2) Con eso. (With that.)
3) **Con él.

Many do, but not all. Some have a single word covering both ‘it’ and ‘this’: e.g. Basque, Marathi and Buryat. Such languages are called ‘two-person’, as opposed to ‘three-person’ languages like English.

I think jcb has noticed something more interesting than that. Something about inanimate "it" not being able to be used deictically in a very direct way (pointing out at something) in English, while animate "him/her/them" don't have that restriction.

Maybe it'd be clearer to use a direct object example.

A: Who did she bring (to the party)?
B: Him. (pointing out at the guy)

A: What did she bring?
B: This.
B: **It. (pointing out at the thing)

[zompist]

I'm not sure how to describe this distinction. Is it simply that <he> and <she> can be used as demonstratives, and <it> can't ? Maybe I'm confused only because <he> and <she> are not normally described/taught as demonstratives ?

Checking Levinson's Pragmatics, the term I think you want is gestural deixis, though there's no guarantee that people will understand you.

Deixis is the general term for all linguistic elements that depend on context-- usually location in space, location in time, and identity of the speaker and listener. All personal pronouns, demonstratives, and interrogatives are deictic (arguably indefinites like everyone and nothing are not). So are plenty of other words, such as come, recent, later, tomorrow.

Demonstratives refer only to space deixis, and in the third person.

Levinson distinguishes gestural and symbolic deixis. The first requires an actual gesture, though this may sometimes be no more than stress on the word itself. Compare:
a) I can't stand him [pointing].
b) You know John? I can't stand him.
(b) is symbolic, as no actual gesture is needed.

So what you're saying is that I, you, he, her, they, this, that can be used gesturally, but it cannot.

Or more precisely, that they can be used gesturally as a full one-word utterance. It can be used as part of a longer sentence:

--Did something make a noise?
--[pointing at a mousetrap] It did.

[alice]

I thought this, or it, was something to do with HTML tags, and maybe a new concept in conlanging.

[bradrn]

Or more precisely, that they can be used gesturally as a full one-word utterance. It can be used as part of a longer sentence:

--Did something make a noise?
--[pointing at a mousetrap] It did.

This still feels quite odd to me; I’d prefer ‘That did’, or even ‘That one did’.

[Znex]

Just something that occurred to me, but it could be because of the tendency of "it' to be used as an impersonal or dummy pronoun, or as a referent to abstract entities. That's certainly what "it" has in common with German "es" at least, as opposed to German "das". Also I recall that in French the use of "ce" as a standalone deictic is ungrammatical despite its frequency elsewhere and its usage as a dummy pronoun, but "il" and "elle" can be used (mostly as animate deictics) or "ça" and "cela".

I wonder how far this phenomenon extends outside SAE territory? Off the top of my head (thinking of languages with neuter gender, at least pronominally), Ancient Greek is maybe a bad example since it's generally reluctant to use its independent third person pronouns (aut-) outside of the nominative case, but its various demonstratives are used commonly enough (even as vocative deictics). Latin I don't know too much about, but I'm inclined to think its third person pronouns are permissible as deictics.