Demonstratives 👉

Demonstratives are a special kind of determiner words that are used to point to or specify nouns. These are are words that work like "this, that, these, those." In Pashto we use the words for demonstratives:

• دا - daa (this / these)
• دغه - dágha (this / these)
• هغه - hágha (that / those)

And these words also inflect in some interesting ways. TLDR; See the tables at the bottom.

The general دا - daa

The word دا - daa (this / these) is probably the most common demonstrative in Pashto. It's also fairly general, for pointing to people or things close by or at a medium distance. ("Distance" here can refer to the distance in conversation, not just physical distance.)

The other nice thing about this useful pointer word is that it is the same for masculine or feminine, singular or plural!

Inflecting دا - daa to دې - de

In all these examples above, masculine and feminine, singular or plural, we always use دا - daa. But what happens when we need to inflect a word because it's in a sandwich or because it's the subject of a past tense transitive verb? In that case it becomes دې - de.

Remember, normally we would inflect a word when it's plural, but not with دا - daa! we only inflect this word for two reasons:

• being in a sandwich
• being the subject of a past tense transitive verb

Here are some examples of the demonstrative دا - daa being inflected because it's used for the subject of a past tense transitive verb.

Notice how the nouns change depending on whether they're singular or plural. When they nouns are a subject of a past tense transitive verb and plural, they use the double inflection. But there is no difference no difference in دې - de (this / these) between singular and plural.

And here are some examples of دا - daa being inflected because it's in a sandwich.

Again, there's no difference in the دې - de (this / these) between singular and plural.

But things get a little more complicated when we want to get a bit more specific with our demonstratives and use هغه - hágha (that / those) and دغه - dágha (this / these).

More specific دغه - dágha / هغه - hágha

When we want to be more specific with our pointing we can use the other two demonstratives:

• دغه - dágha (this / these) (closer)
• هغه - hágha (that / those) (further)

Notice that that this second one is different than the 3rd pers. sing pronoun!

• هغه - hágha (that / those) (demonstrative)
• هغه - haghá (he / she it) (pronoun)

In their plain forms, these do not change from masculine to feminine.

These demonstratives also don't change when they're plural:

Inflecting دغه - dágha / هغه - hágha

But, here's where things get more complicated... If they are inflected because of those other two reasons:

• being in a sandwich
• being the subject of a past tense transitive verb

Then the full craziness of inflections are unleashed 👇

Here are some examples of these words inflecting because they're singular but in a sandwich:

And here are some examples of these words inflecting because they're singular but also the subject of a past tense transitive verb.

Finally, let's look at some examples where the demonstrative is double inflected because the noun is both plural and inflected for another reason.

Plural and in a sandwich:

Plural and the subject of a past tense transitive verb:

Demonstratives without the noun

In Pashto, demonstratives can also be used without saying the noun they are pointing to. So you can use the words دا - daa (this / these), دغه - dágha (this / these), هغه - hágha (that / those) without saying the noun that they are referring to.

Overview / Tables

Ergative here means the subject of a past tense transitive verb.