Demonstratives in Arabic dialects have different forms, depending on the region. In order to describe the main paradigms, this entry generalizes as much as possible and describes their general features rather than individual dialectal details.
In all Arabic dialects, there are two series of demonstratives, one conveying the idea of near deixis, with respect to the speaker, ‘this, these’, the other the idea of far deixis, which is associated with the interlocutor, ‘that, those’. This difference is not limited to a space opposition near/far…