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From personal deixis to spatial deixis : The semantic evolution of demonstratives in French The aim of this article is to look at the way in which the semantic content of demonstratives evolves. The diversity of the semantic values of demonstratives is to be found not only in the languages of the world, but also in the diachronic evolution of one and the same language. How does this evolution from one semantic value to another occur ? We will demonstrate that this change occurred in two stages, from the personal meaning in Latin to the subjective meaning in very Old French, then from the subjective to the spatial meaning in the 13th century French.