Revisiting presentative particles: a multimodal study of the Hebrew particle hine

1 Introduction

Expressions such as the French voici/voilà, Italian ecco, Yiddish ot, or Russian vot/von are variously termed in the literature as “presentative particles” (Petit 2010), “deictic presentative” (Diessel 2023; Grenoble and Riley 1996; Porhiel 2012), “eccetive” (Talmy 2018), “ostensive evidential” (Hanks 2017), “ostensive predicator” (Creissels 2017; Kuteva et al. 2019), “presentative demonstrative” (Killian 2022; Treis 2020), and “ostensive marker” (Creissels et al. 2025).^[1] They are usually regarded as expressions with an ostensive function of drawing the addressee’s attention to an entity or event in the immediate speech situation (Creissels 2017; Creissels et al. 2025; Killian 2022; Petit 2010; Wood and Zanuttini 2023; Zanuttini 2017).^[2] Although presentative particles have occasionally been mentioned in the typological literature, particularly in classifications of non-verbal clause constructions or predications (Croft 2022: §10.4.3; Creissels et al. 2025: §4.5; Haspelmath 2025: §10), they “are frequently overlooked, and even when not, they are simply relegated to categories like ‘particle’ or ‘adverb,’ remaining unanalyzed” (Killian 2022: 3).

Creissels et al. (2025: §4.5) point out the hybrid nature of clauses with presentative particles (their “ostensive clauses”). On the one hand, clauses with presentative particles have been claimed to entail the identification of a referent and its presence at some place, and consequently, such clauses are variously related to nominal predication with a demonstrative in the role of argument (That’s my house) or locational predication (Here is my house). On the other hand, such clauses are characterized by specific syntactic constraints that make them similar to exclamatory clauses; notably, they can neither be negated nor questioned.^[3] Relatedly, Tacke (2022) makes an interesting suggestion that, in addition to their basic ostensive function, presentative particles may also evoke secondary, context-dependent aspectual readings, such as resultativity (‘X has arrived and is now here’), progressivity (‘there goes/comes X’), or inchoativity (‘X has just started to …’).

Attributing an ostensive function to presentative particles (e.g., Creissels et al. 2025; Killian 2022; Petit 2010), namely directing the addressee’s attention to perceptible entities, is consistent with the two main diachronic sources for these particles: imperative forms of ‘see/look’ verbs and deictic elements (Creissels 2017; Julia 2020; Kuteva et al. 2019; Petit 2010). Despite their different origins, these two sources share a directive force, which may lend them quite naturally to be used for directing the addressee’s attention to perceptually accessible entities. An oft-cited example is the French presentative paradigm voici/voilà, which combines both sources in a single item: the imperative form of the verb voir ‘see’ in combination with the deictic adverbs ici ‘here’ and là ‘there’ that have been grammaticalized to the presentatives voici and voilà, respectively. Another example comes from the Arabic dialect continuum that richly illustrates both these sources, as some dialects employ presentative particles that are based on the demonstrative elements hā (haː) and ḏā (ðaː), while others are derived from the imperative form of the verb raʔā (raʔaː) ‘see’ (Khan 2008; Taine-Cheikh 2013). Even though the use of presentative particles clearly involves the indication of perceptual access to referents, the correlation between presentative particles and evidentiality has not received its due attention. However, verbs of seeing, from which presentative particles are often derived, have been associated with evidentiality either by acquiring evidential meaning, “cognitive seeing”, through semantic-pragmatic extension (e.g., Brinton 2008; Ibarretxe-Antuñano 2008), or by routinization of their usage with specifying utterances in co-present interactions where evidentiality has been an aspect of such construction from the very beginning of its origins (Keevallik and Amon 2024).

The categories of deixis and evidentiality represent two grammatical systems that have received a great deal of scholarly attention.^[4] Although distinct in their basic function – deictics are dedicated to individuated reference whereas evidentials are dedicated to marking the status of the utterance (Hanks 2014: 12) – these two systems have a lot in common and intersect in various interesting ways (de Haan 2001, 2003, 2005). Both deixis and evidentiality share a relational structure between the speaker (origo) and an external object or event, with their core pragmatic dimension centered on the speaker’s perceptual, cognitive, and social access to the referred objects or events (Hanks 2014: §3). Moreover, deictic elements have been documented as one of the diachronic sources for the development of grammaticalized evidentials (Aikhenvald 2004: §9.1.2; de Haan 2003: §6; Hanks 2014: 3). Thus, presentative particles, claimed to direct the recipient’s attention to perceptible objects, illustrate a “provocative blend of directivity and perception-based evidentiality” (Hanks 2017: §4).

While conceptually related to spatial deictics, such as locative adverbs (‘here’/‘there’), and demonstrative pronouns (‘this’/‘that’), presentative particles not only manifest spatial grounding, but also temporal grounding to the moment of speech. As such, these particles “combine both the illocutionary force of the attention-directing speech act and the function of a locational predicate” (Tacke 2022: 4), and establish a pragmatic link “with a speech partner whose attention is drawn to an element of the surrounding world” (Petit 2010: 166). These features potentially bring presentative particles closer to the category of pointing. Pointing is usually defined as a bodily movement through which one person tries to direct another’s attention toward a target that is presumed to be visual and present in the speech situation (e.g., Clark 2003; Cooperrider et al. 2018; Kita 2003).^[5] While some scholars regard pointing as the conduct of an individual producer, revealing how referencing through pointing is achieved in interaction (Goodwin 2003; Hindmarsh and Heath 2000; Mondada 2012, 2014; Streeck 2017), Clark (2003) treats pointing as a “joint action” between its producer and the addressee, similar to Petit’s (2010) conception of presentative particles.

Regarding the pragmatic conditions for their usage, Talmy (2018) notes that the use of presentative particles (his “eccetives”) is only felicitous where the target they indicate was previously established by the interlocutors as an entity of interest that is currently not evident to them within their perceivable environment. For example, the clause Here’s/There’s the/a taxi, as well as its counterparts in Italian Ecco il/un taxi, French Voilà le/un taxi, Russian Vot i taksi/Von taksi, and Yiddish Ot iz der teksi, are said to be appropriate in contexts where the collocutors have phoned for a taxi in advance or agreed to hail one down if spotted – but not when a taxi has not previously been discussed (Talmy 2018: 549–550). This pragmatic constraint is regarded by Wood and Zanuttini (2023: 589) as a defining characteristic of clauses with presentative particles (their “presentatives”). According to their analysis, the use of presentative particles is not felicitous when introducing an entity that is entirely new or unexpected. Therefore, the introduced entity must either have been mentioned earlier or can be inferred from the context.

While spatial deictics have been discussed extensively in past research from various perspectives, presentative particles are relatively understudied. This general dearth of research also holds for the particle hine in Israeli Hebrew (henceforth: IH), which, in contrast to its Biblical Hebrew (henceforth: BH) precursor hinne, has been rather overlooked in the literature. To fill this gap, based mostly on video-recorded material, the present paper aims to provide a functional multimodal analysis of hine. Video data are especially significant for research on presentative particles given their commonly accepted basic function of drawing attention to perceptible objects.

Following a review of the literature on the IH particle hine (Section 2), we present our methodology, data, and analytical procedures (Section 3). We then analyze the uses of hine in our data and propose that its basic function is to indicate a change in the speaker’s or interlocutor’s (or both) perceptual access to a relevant perceptible entity occurring in the immediate setting (Section 4). Finally, we summarize the study and provide our concluding remarks (Section 5).

2 The IH particle hine

The IH particle hine – an inheritance from BH hinne ‘Lo! Behold!’ – is usually described as the primary presentative particle, albeit its distribution in IH differs from that in BH and post-BH (Bar-Asher Siegal 2022; Gzella 2013; Stern 2021). Its BH precursor has attracted a fair amount of attention from lexicographers, grammarians, and other scholars (Cohen 2014; Kogut 1986; Miller-Naudé and van der Merwe 2011; Sadka 2001; Zewi 1996, among many others).^[6] In contrast, analyses and observations regarding the usage of hine in IH have mostly been mentioned in passing or as part of discussions on other topics, except for Izre’el (2023), see below.

An early observation was made by Kogut (1986: §3) who argued as part of his analysis of the BH hinne that hine in IH had acquired a locative meaning ( hine ha=bait {def=house} ‘Here is the house’) similar to that of the locative adverbs po ‘here’ or kan ‘here’ ( po / kan ha=bait {def=house} ‘Here is the house’); thus hine could function as adverbial predicate. At the same time, Kogut mentions that hine differs from po/kan in two respects. First, hine must occur clause-initially (*habait hine), whereas locative adverbs can occur clause-initially or finally (po/kan habait or habait po/kan). Second, locative adverbs can serve as an adjunct (jaʃavti {sat.1sg} po/kan ‘I sat here’), whereas hine cannot (*jaʃavti {sat.1sg} hine) (see also Bar-Asher Siegal 2022: 351). It should be noted that hine cannot be negated (*lo {neg} hine), whereas locative adverbs can (lo {neg} po/kan).

The assumed equivalence between hine and locative adverbs was rejected by Sadka (1997, 2001) on account of it being an “optical illusion” (Sadka 1997: 553). According to Sadka, in clauses such as hine ha=bait ‘Here is the house’, hine points both to the house and its location. Sadka proposes viewing hine as an interjection that does not constitute part of the phrasal or clausal syntax, and whose primary function is to allow its speaker to mark direct sights in a way that declares the existence of a visible entity or situation, one that has not been perceived prior to the declaration. Based on this account, the function of directing the recipient’s attention is pragmatically implied from the very declaration of the existence of a visible entity or situation. According to Sadka, this basic meaning also gives rise to the secondary meanings of surprise, suddenness, and marking new information (cf. Ariel 1998: 248), all of which can be regarded as being metaphorically extended from the momentary shift in perception that is involved in the basic meaning of hine.

From a semiotic, sign-oriented perspective, Tobin (1991) juxtaposed hine with various existential markers, such as jeʃ ‘there is/are’ and en ‘there is/are not’, suggesting that all particles share a core meaning of existence: (1) jeʃ alerts the addressee to the presence or existence of an entity; (2) en alerts the addressee to the absence of an entity or the negation of its existence; and (3) hine signals that the speaker is strongly affirming, asserting, or declaring the presence or existence of an entity X.^[7]

More recently, Izre’el (2023) analyzed the formal manifestations and syntactic functions of IH hine using audio-recorded data from The Corpus of Spoken Israeli Hebrew (CoSIH). He proposed that hine carries the force of direct evidential modality and is primarily used as a verbal pointer to a concrete referent in the immediate environment, and to referential expressions of locations, time, states, and events. Structurally, Izre’el (2023) demonstrates that hine can either preface a noun phrase or another sentence, or function as an independent sentence on its own.

Though Sadka (1997, 2001) links the use of hine to visual perception and Izre’el (2023) to direct evidentiality, these accounts do not fully emancipate themselves from the traditional view of hine as a presentative particle. In this paper, we aim to direct the spotlight on these accounts, developing them from a pragmatic-interactional perspective using video-recorded data. Based on the functional distribution of hine in our data, we will suggest that its basic function is to indicate a change in the participant’s (either speaker’s or recipient’s) perceptual access to a perceptible entity in the immediate setting, with the use of hine presupposing the relevance of this entity for the speakers. The association with the mode of access to information links the use of hine with the notion of direct evidentiality on the one hand. On the other, its connection to a change in perceptual access aligns hine more closely with change-of-state tokens, through which speakers indicate a shift in their knowledge, information, orientation, or awareness (similar to the English oh; Heritage 1984). Articulating what would otherwise be a private cognitive process serves as a vehicle for various conversational actions, such as noticing, having one’s attention drawn to something, remembering, being reminded, informed, or corrected, and arriving at discoveries or realizations of various kinds (Heritage 1984: 337). We also show that in many occurrences of hine, actions such as drawing the addressee’s attention to a particular entity and indicating its existence or location – meanings previously associated with hine – often occur in close proximity to the particle. However, these functions can be attributed to other resources, such as pointing gestures or verbal expressions that occur within the same interactional context.

3 Data and methods

The data for this research were obtained from two main sources of informal IH: (1) two television talk shows – Rendezvous with Roni Kuban and Soul Talk – recorded between 2017 and 2022,^[8] and (2) the video component of the HUJI Corpus of Spoken Hebrew (HCSH, Marmorstein et al. 2022; Marmorstein and Matalon 2025), which include co-present interactions between university students and their friends and relatives, recorded in 2022. Additionally, we substantiate our proposal by analyzing the uses of hine in WhatsApp and email messages collected by the authors as well as two-party casual Hebrew conversations held over the telephone from the audio component of the HCSH recorded between 2020 and 2022. The analytical frameworks for this study are Interactional Linguistics (Couper-Kuhlen and Selting 2018) and Multimodal Conversation Analysis (e.g., Goodwin 2018; Mondada 2016). These approaches examine how grammatical resources are used in naturally occurring interactions to produce socially relevant actions, while considering the simultaneous use of multiple communicative modalities that elaborate on one another.

Our collection from the video-recorded data comprises 72 tokens of hine utterances, of which 33 target concrete entities in the immediate surroundings, and 39 discursive entities. In this paper, to establish the basic function of hine, we focus on its concrete uses, 26 of which come from the program Rendezvous with Roni Kuban. A prominent feature of this program is the presence of a board decorated with pictures drawn from the guest’s life, which serves as an anchor for the host’s questions. This feature is beneficial for the current study as it creates frequent opportunities to search for specific pictures on the board, draw the recipient’s attention to them, and indicate that they have been noticed. As such, it constitutes a perspicuous setting (Garfinkel and Wieder 1992) for exploring presentative particles, deixis, and other related phenomena. However, the use of televised interaction has limitations. For example, the camera was often focused on only one participant, limiting our access to indications of the recipient’s responses and to the interpersonal coordination of bodily conduct.

4 Hine – a pragmatic-interactional analysis

In the present section, we illustrate the uses of hine in which, we suggest, the particle is employed to indicate a change in the participants’ perceptual access to a concrete entity found in the immediate setting of the interaction. The use of hine presupposes that the perceived entity has some contextual or circumstantial relevance for the speakers, and as such is often expected in the current surroundings. The expectation to perceive this entity can stem from co-participants’ prior knowledge regarding the presence of particular objects in a certain environment or can be evoked in the ongoing interaction by one of the speakers informing the other that an object occurs in the current surroundings. Since indication of a change in the participant’s perceptual access to a concrete and anticipated entity appears to be a consistent feature across all the tokens in our collection, this can be considered a basic function of the particle, within the scope of our data.^[9] The referent of such concrete perceived entity can be either verbalized or not. We begin with an excerpt taken from a personal TV interview from the program Rendezvous with Roni Kuban. The excerpt is taken from the very beginning of the program, after the host introduces the guest and the guest enters the room.^[10]

After the exchange of greetings (lines 1–3), the guest produces the particle hine followed by the noun phrase ha=kir ‘the board’ (line 4).^[11] We suggest that by deploying hine, the guest indicates a change in his perceptual access from not seeing the concrete entity (the board) to seeing it. In this case, the perceived object is designated in the following noun phrase ha=kir ‘the board’. The meanings proposed for hine in the literature do not fit this usage: it is clear the guest is neither pointing to the board as an attempt to attract the host’s attention to it, nor is he indicating its existence since both participants are aware of it in this particular setting, due to their familiarity with the program. Moreover, the guest explicitly articulates his familiarity by mentioning that he watches the program (line 5) and describing what happens in it (lines 6–9). Furthermore, the perceived referent is modified by the definite article ha, which further suggests participants’ familiarity with the object. Additionally, the utterance is coordinated with the two-handed Palms Up gesture (Figure 1), which is often associated with obviousness (e.g., Inbar and Maschler 2023; Müller 2004). In this case, the gesture can be interpreted as indicating that seeing the board in this particular setting is obvious. Another evidence that seeing the board was anticipated can be the deployment of the particle ve ‘and’ that, by virtue of being a particle that often precedes some result or consequence (e.g., Inbar 2020), can frame the process of perception indicated by hine ha=kir ‘here is the board!’ (line 4) as an outcome of the anticipation. Moreover, from the moment the guest enters the room, he smiles – some studies have shown that smiling could be deployed to convey an expectant stance (e.g., Soulaimani 2018).

Excerpt 2 is also taken from the program Rendezvous with Roni Kuban, and it too illustrates a context in which hine is produced by the speaker who has noticed the entity. Prior to this excerpt, the guest was observing the board from a distance and expressed his amazement of its overall size and the large number of pictures on it.

Co-produced with an identification construction ze ata ‘this is you’ (line 1), the host points to the board. He then notes that the board also contains pictures of the guest’s parents (lines 2–3), followed by expressing pride over the degree of effort expended by the production team to collect the pictures (lines 4–5). In response, the guest produces the Hebrew change-of-state marker (Heritage 2016) a::: (line 6) indicating that he has undergone some kind of shift in awareness, followed by another discourse marker naχon ‘right’ (line 7), confirming the host’s prior informing while expressing an epistemic stance of certainty concerning it (Maschler and Miller Shapiro 2016). Co-extensively with naχon ‘right’ the guest starts gazing at the board and approaches it more closely. He then produces an utterance that consists of hine, conveying that the speaker has undergone a change in visual access from not seeing this anticipated image of his parents to seeing it, and the noun phrase ha=horim ʃeli ‘my parents’ that designates the referent of the entity he has just perceived. While in the previous example, the expectation was based on the participant’s prior knowledge, in this example, the expectation to see this particular picture is prompted by the host’s remark regarding its presence on the board (lines 2–3), to which the interviewee responds by looking for this picture and approaching the board (line 7). As in the previous example, it is clear that the guest is not trying to draw the host’s attention to the picture of his parents, since the interviewer was the one who mentioned it in the first place; nor does he claim the existence of such a picture, since the host was the one who explicitly declared its existence previously by deploying existential construction (Izre’el 2022) (lines 2–3).

Excerpt 3, taken from the HCSH (Marmorstein et al. 2022), is a conversation between two friends, Yael and Neta. The speakers discuss a book they have both read, the book that Yael is holding in her hands throughout the entire extract and flipping through the pages. Yael initiates a search for a certain chapter by saying ˈefo ze aχˈʃav ‘Where is it now?’ (line 1).

Yael initiates a search for a certain chapter (line 1), and Neta assists her by telling Yael where it is supposed to be (lines 2–3). Yael continues to browse through the book in order to find the chapter, while having a disagreement with Neta about its title and placement. Neta disagrees with Yael (line 4), adding that the chapter Yael is trying to find is the penultimate one (line 5). Simultaneously, she begins to help Yael browse through the book (Figure 4), directing her to the right page. After 12 s, during which the speakers are still having a disagreement about the chapter’s name and placement, while both Yael and Neta are browsing through the book looking for it, Yael produces a stand-alone hine (line 6) and leans toward the book (Figure 5). Yael then examines it closely for 3.4 s while scanning it (line 7).

The function of drawing attention to this entity is not relevant here, since only Yael can see the specific chapter due to their seating arrangement (Figures 3, 4, and 5). Therefore, we suggest that hine, similar to what we have seen in the previous examples, indicates a perceptual change that occurred in the speaker’s mind from not seeing the chapter in the book to locating it. In other words, Yael indicates that she has found the chapter. The relevance of the chapter is derived from the speaker’s search for it throughout the excerpt.

Indicating a perceptual change in the speaker is particularly noticeable in contexts in which the recipient does not share the physical space with the speaker at all – for example, in telephone conversations. Excerpt 4, taken from the HCSH (Marmorstein et al. 2022), illustrates the use of hine in such a context. In this telephone conversation, Avital tries to arrange a meeting with her grandmother, Geula, and for this purpose she looks for a note where the schedule of her children’s lessons is written.

By the question efo ha=petek ʃeli ‘where is my note’ (line 4), Avital indicates that she is looking for the note. She then uses an existential-possessive construction (lines 5–6) to indicate that she possesses a note with the lessons of her children. As she finds it, she produces a stand-alone hine indicating that she has undergone a perceptual change from not seeing the note to seeing it. In other words, the note has been found and is now perceptually accessible to her. In this example, it is even more striking that hine is not deployed to draw the recipient’s attention, since the recipient does not share the physical space with the speaker, and therefore cannot see the note. Neither is it used to declare its existence, since it has been stated previously (lines 5–6).

Another setting in which the participants do not share perceptual access to the entities in the immediate surroundings is written interactions in which the participants are not co-present, such as the following WhatsApp exchange.

In line 1, sp1 informs that they sent sp2 the final draft. Sp2 responds that they still cannot see it and asks to which email address the message was sent (line 2). In line 3, sp1 provides the email address. Following the Hebrew change-of-state marker a (אה) indicating that sp2 has experienced a shift in awareness, sp2 produces hine – obviously not to draw sp1’s attention to the message (or another object), but rather to inform the co-participant that sp2 has just located the message, which is now perceptually accessible to them.

In the previous examples, hine was deployed to indicate a change in the participant’s access to a relevant entity that occurred either as fulfillment of this participant’s expectation to see that entity, or as the culmination of the process of searching for it, initiated by the speaker producing the particle. These examples did not involve drawing the interlocutor’s attention to the entity, a function commonly attributed to hine and reflected in the term “presentative” and other terms used for the equivalent particles. In the following examples, we will see that hine can also be used in interactional contexts that involve drawing the interlocutor’s attention to an entity associated with the particle, and in some of them, the perception of this entity is relevant for the interlocutor. However, we demonstrate that the function we have attributed to hine remains valid in these contexts, while the role of directing the addressee’s attention can be specifically associated with other co-occurring resources in the interaction, such as the imperative form of the verb ‘look’ and manual pointing gestures, which are typically deployed in close proximity to hine, most often immediately afterward.

In Excerpt 6, taken from the personal interviews program, Rendezvous with Roni Kuban, the search was not initiated by the participant producing the particle hine but rather the other participant.

The host launches a course of action and suggests starting a discussion on the guest’s parents (line 1). The host then approaches the board uttering that he can see the picture of the guest’s father (line 2) deploying the spatial deictic po ‘here’, whereas the precise location of the picture is indicated by pointing (Figure 6). After a long pause of 1.1 s, the host asks where the picture of the guest’s mother is (line 3). The question can indicate that the host is currently engaged in the process of searching for this picture as well as simultaneously invite the interlocutor to be involved in this process. After a pause of 0.6 s, the guest is the one who notices the picture first and indicates it via uttering hine (line 4), which also confirms that the guest accepted the appeal to look for the picture. However, since the search was initiated by the interlocutor – the host – directing interlocutor’s attention to the newly found entity becomes relevant. Thus, it can be argued that hine not only indicates the speaker’s shift in visual access to the picture but also prompts the host to shift his visual attention as well. However, the guest then points to the picture, approaches it further (Figure 7), and adds that in this picture, his mother was captured when she was young (line 5). Thus, the attention of the host to the picture can be achieved through a manual pointing gesture. Note that, in this case, the pointing gesture and hine are temporally separated. Since indicating the speaker’s change in visual access to the picture is also contextually relevant, and the host’s attention can be effectively directed through pointing, it is plausible that, even in contexts involving the drawing of attention to an entity, as in the present case, the particle hine indicates the perception of the entity as the culmination of a preceding search process.

As in Excerpt 6, in the following two examples, directing the interlocutor’s attention becomes relevant. In these examples, the perceptible entity constitutes evidence for the speaker’s previous statement, making it expected that the interlocutors will look at it. However, similar to Excerpt 6, drawing attention to the entity is likely accomplished by other means, which follow the particle hine, such as the imperative form of the verb “look” (Excerpt 7) and pointing (Excerpt 8). Moreover, the participant who produces hine is the one who initiated the search, and it is plausible that, in these examples, they first indicate that they have located the entity and subsequently direct the interlocutors’ attention to it.

Prior to Excerpt 7, taken from the same television talk show as Excerpt 6, the host had asked the guest, an Israeli journalist, whether there was anything in his professional past he regretted, listing several potential examples. In Excerpt 7, the conversation revolves around one such potential issue, namely the “Ohana affair”.^[12]

The host asks the guest whether he has any regrets about the Ohana affair (line 1), characterizing it as possibly the biggest stain on the guest’s journalistic career (line 2). The guest strongly rejects this position, stating that the Ohana affair is barely a stain (line 3), and dismisses it with the discourse marker azov ‘lit. let go’ (Polak-Yitzhaki 2017) (line 4). In order to support his position, the guest initiates a search for the newspaper article where the Ohana affair was covered for the first time. He utters ha=sipur nimʦa po ‘The story is here’ (line 5) pointing at the board with his extended index finger (Figure 8). The guest then mentions that he had observed it on the board beforehand (line 6), co-extensively getting up and turning his body toward the board, while still producing the pointing gesture (Figure 9). He then proceeds with a confirmation request (Ben-Moshe and Maschler 2024), na’xon? ‘Right?’ (line 8), regarding the possibility that he saw it on the board. Confirmation requests are usually addressed to someone presumed to have epistemic access or knowledge about specific issues at hand (Ben-Moshe and Maschler 2024). As someone who possesses relevant knowledge about the location of the newspaper article, the host is well positioned to confirm that the paper is on the board (line 9). The guest says that he is going to approach the board and find this article (lines 10–11). He starts walking toward the board (Figure 10), and upon finding the article, the guest produces the utterance hine hu ‘here it is’ (line 12). We suggest that via this utterance, rather than directing the recipient’s attention to the newspaper, the speaker conveys that he has undergone a change in his visual access from not seeing the article to seeing it, as a culmination of his search for this article.

Although the host knows that the article is on the board, and perhaps even its exact location, it is plausible that the guest intends for the host to examine the article, since it is presumed to support the guest’s position that the Ohana affair is “barely a stain” on his journalistic career, in opposition to the position proposed by the host. Thus, the deployment of hine in this context creates a strong relevance for the interlocutor to look at the article. However, the host’s attention is explicitly directed to this entity by the imperative stakel ‘look’ (line 13). The order to examine the title of the article is followed by the claim that the title is accurate even to date (line 14).

Excerpt 8 is another example in which the participant who produces hine is the one who initiated the search, and the context in which the particle hine is deployed, creates a strong relevance to the interlocutor to pay attention to that entity. The example is taken from an episode of Rendezvous with Roni Kuban, in which the guest, who is a popular Israeli actress, tells the host that she has always been very funny.

The guest says that she remembers herself being funny from a very young age (lines 1–4). She then turns toward the board (Figure 11), likely in order to search for a picture. Upon locating the picture, she produces a stand-alone hine (line 5) which, we suggest, indicates a change in her perceptual access from not seeing this picture to seeing it. This is followed by the existential-locative construction jeʃ po et=ha=tmuna ha=zoti | ‘There is this photo here’ (line 7), which is co-produced with an index-finger pointing gesture directed at the picture of the guest as a baby (Figure 12). Through the deployment of this construction, the speaker identifies the entity she has just perceived, asserts its existence (lines 6–7), and indicates its location via pointing (Figures 12 and 13). The guest explains that she is making a face in the photo (line 7) and turns her gaze back to the host (Figure 13). While gazing at the guest, she adds that people used to ask her to make a face and she would happily comply (lines 8–10). While saying this, she not only continues pointing toward the picture but also extends her arm away from her body, thereby accentuating the action of directing the guest’s attention to the picture. Although it could hypothetically be debated whether hine functions to direct the interlocutor’s attention in this context, what is unambiguous is the role of the pointing gesture itself: at this point, it is recipient-oriented and clearly serves to draw the interlocutor’s attention, as the speaker looks at the recipient while pointing. It is also reasonable to assume that, in order to point at something, the speaker must first locate it herself, after which she can direct someone else’s attention to it. We suggest that this shift in perceptual access is marked by hine and is subsequently followed by the attention-directing gesture.

In this example, the picture constitutes evidence for the speaker’s previous statement that she has been funny from a very early age (lines 1–4). It was the guest who initiated the search for the picture by turning toward the board, although this was not verbally indicated as in Excerpt 7. Nevertheless, she finds the picture in order to convince the host, and in this respect, the context creates a strong incentive for the interlocutor to look at the picture. Thus, the interlocutor’s attention is explicitly directed to the picture via a pointing gesture and implicitly by virtue of that picture being evidence presumed to be perceived.

Excerpt 9 is another example from the same interview program, and this time the guest is an Israeli politician. At the beginning of the segment, the host talks about the guest’s brother, noting that he took a different professional direction (as he became a football player).

After talking about the guest’s mother (not shown), the host introduces the guest’s brother into the discourse via an existential construction, jeʃ et aχiχ miχael ‘there is your brother Michael’ (lines 1–2), adding that he took a completely different professional direction (line 4). While saying it, he initiates a search for the picture of the guest’s brother by turning his gaze toward the board. Overlapping with the guest’s confirmation via naχon ‘right’ (line 5), the host verbally indicates the ongoing search process with a ‘where’ interrogative (line 6). The host examines the board from top to bottom, and upon perceiving the picture, produces a stand-alone hine (line 7). The host proceeds requesting confirmation (Ben-Moshe and Maschler 2024) via naχon ‘right?’ (line 8), likely, that the picture indeed represents the guest’s brother, which the guest confirms (line 9). Co-extensively with requesting confirmation, the host averts his gaze from the board and shifts his attention to his notebook, while simultaneously pointing at the picture with his index finger (Figure 14), thereby indicating its location and drawing the interlocutor’s attention to it.

The use of hine can be interpreted within the framework suggested in this study. By deploying the particle hine, the speaker indicates that he has undergone a change in his perceptual access to the picture of the guest’s brother as a culmination of the search process. Afterwards, he draws the interlocutor’s attention to the picture through a pointing gesture, which is relevant in this context as the host is requesting information about it.

Our last example represents a rare case in which hine indicates a change in the perceptual access that has occurred in the interlocutor. Excerpt 10 is taken from the very beginning of an episode of the program Rendezvous with Roni Kuban, with the host welcoming the guest (lines 1–2) and the guest reciprocating (line 3).

After an exchange of verbal and gestural greetings (lines 1–3; Figure 15), the host points to the location of the board with a vertically open palm (Figure 16) and the guest turns toward the board and approaches it. After 0.9 s, during which the guest faces the board and walks toward it, the host produces a ve ‘and’-prefaced hine, followed by the noun phrase ha=kir ʃe hu at ‘the board that is you’, which designates an object and provides an elaboration on it (line 4). The meanings proposed for hine in the literature do not fit this example, either: drawing attention is not relevant because the board is already in the focus of the recipient’s attention, likely as a result of the interviewer pointing in its direction that preceded his uttering hine. Indicating the existence of the board is also irrelevant because the guest is most likely familiar with the program, and the presence of such a board is anticipated in its setting. Moreover, the referent of the pointed-to object is modified by the definite article ha, which further suggests that the presence of that object is anticipated not only by the speaker, but also by his interlocutor. Finally, prefacing the utterance by the particle ve ‘and’ frames the perception of the board as an outcome of anticipation. Unlike the previous examples, the use of the particle hine in this case is exclusively recipient-oriented. However, we propose that, similar to its other uses, the particle here also indicates a perceptual shift that has already occurred, but given that the syntactic and prosodic structure is different here, it is plausible that the speaker highlights that the board, which the recipient is now perceiving, is being identified as representing her. The speaker’s communicative aim here is not merely to indicate a perceptual shift, but to explicitly assert that the board the recipient has been observing stands for the recipient – that is, to establish an identificational link between the board and the addressee. The prosodic prominences on both kir ‘board’ and at ‘you’ reinforce this interpretation, emphasizing the identificational relationship the speaker constructs between the object and the recipient. Thus, the hine-clause as a whole refers to the recipient’s perceptual shift as a vehicle for characterizing the perceived entity in a specific way. Therefore, it appears that this case reflects a more advanced stage of grammaticalization.

5 Summary and conclusions

Using video-recorded data, the current paper has sought to enhance our understanding of the basic function of the IH particle hine, traditionally classified as a presentative particle. Analyzing its occurrences from a pragmatic-interactional perspective, with a particular focus on the participants’ co-extensive bodily behavior, our study suggests that the basic function of hine is to indicate a change in the perceptual access of the participant (whether the speaker, the addressee, or both) to a concrete and relevant entity within the immediate setting of the interaction. This interpretation differs from the traditional understanding of presentative particles in general and the particle hine in particular.

Presentative particles have typically been linked to functions such as identifying a referent in the surrounding environment, indicating its presence at a specific location, and/or drawing attention to it (e.g., Creissels et al. 2025: §4.5; Killian 2022; Petit 2010). The deictic component of presentative particles is commonly regarded as the central or defining feature of their usage. This perspective is reflected in most terms used in the existing literature to describe these expressions (see Section 1), as well as in the common classification of presentative particles as a distinct type of demonstratives (e.g., Killian 2022). This also holds true for previous accounts of the IH particle hine, which was often categorized as a presentative particle and associated with drawing attention, alongside conveying locative meaning and declaration of existence (Kogut 1986: §3; Sadka 1997; Tobin 1991).

However, as demonstrated in Section 4, speakers can in fact use hine in contexts where they clearly do not intend to draw attention to the entity in question (Excerpts 1–5) or indicate its existence or location. Yet, some contexts clearly involve drawing the interlocutor’s attention to an entity, especially in situations where the perception of this entity is also relevant for the interlocutor (Excerpts 6–10). However, a close examination of such examples reveals that there are other verbal and gestural means in close vicinity to hine to which the function of drawing attention can be attributed without controversy, such as pointing gestures (Excerpts 6–10) or perceptual directives (Excerpt 7). Moreover, hine consistently precedes these means temporally. It is reasonable to assume that the speaker first perceives the object, marks the perceptual shift verbally, and subsequently points to it in order to direct the interlocutor’s attention toward it. It is possible that the pointing function was attributed to hine (and perhaps to presentative particles in general) due to a bias toward a particular type of usage in which hine frequently co-occurs with attention-directing devices, many of which, in turn, have escaped scholarly attention due to lack of access to video-recorded material.

Regarding declaration of existence and indicating a specific location, if they occur in the contexts in which hine is used, these functions are accomplished by other means. The declaration of existence is usually accomplished by existential constructions that precede the use of hine (Excerpts 7–9). Indicating a specific location is usually accomplished by pointing gestures (Excerpts 6–10).

Since a change in perceptual access to a perceptible and anticipated entity is the consistent meaning component across all instances of hine in our collection, we argue that the term “presentative particle” inadequately captures its function, as it unjustifiably foregrounds the attention-directing component, which is clearly absent in a significant number of occurrences. Instead, we propose that hine can be more accurately understood through the prism of the notion of change-of-state markers, such as the English oh (Heritage 1984) or the German achso/ach (Golato 2010). These markers allow speakers to signal that they have undergone a shift in knowledge, information, orientation, or awareness (Heritage 2016). By vocalizing what would otherwise remain a private cognitive shift, speakers can perform various conversational actions, such as noticing, having one’s attention drawn to something, recalling, being reminded or informed, receiving corrections, or arriving at new realizations (Heritage 1984: 337).

Employing hine to indicate the addressee’s perceptual change may represent a more advanced stage in its lexicalization and grammaticalization processes in IH, as the function extends from expressing the speaker’s private cognitive state to managing intersubjective coordination in interaction – a development associated with increased intersubjectivity in grammaticalization processes (Traugott and Dasher 2002). The use of hine as a structurally embedded element within sentence grammar suggests a further progression in its grammaticalization. This integration aligns with the grammaticalization path whereby change-of-state tokens evolve into lexical items that become increasingly routinized and abstracted from anchoring in momentary cognitive states, allowing them to function within broader syntactic and interactional structures.

Moreover, the perceptual shift indicated by hine is associated with the mode of access to information, and as such links the particle with the notion of direct evidentiality. On the other hand, the perceptual shift indicated by hine involves the fulfillment of expectation, and a change in state is often indicated following completion of the search process. These characteristics bring the use of hine closer to aspectual notions of achievement and resultative (cf. Tacke 2022). These concepts, traditionally discussed within the context of the lexical semantics of verbs (e.g., Dowty 1991; Smith 1991; Vendler 1957), refer to punctual events consisting of a single stage that culminates in a change of state. Achievement verbs, such as find, recognize, and arrive, describe the moment of transition to a resultant state. Although achievements are conceptually detached from any associated process, some allow – and sometimes conventionally require – preliminary stages (Smith 1991: 58–63). For instance, recognizing a person or finding an object may occur with or without prior attempts to recall the person or search for the object. In contrast, events such as winning a race or reaching the top necessitate preliminary stages, such as participating in the race or ascending toward the summit. The association of hine with the resultative aspect can be reinforced by the fact that it is often prefaced by the particle ve ‘and’ or even more explicit means of resultative meaning – az ‘then’ (cf. Yatziv and Livnat 2007). Moreover, demonstratives, which are often associated with presentative particles, can develop into discourse markers that signal boundaries, transitions, and conclusive points in interaction (There it is! Here you are!; e.g., König 2020).

In light of these findings, we propose reclassifying hine as a resultative-evidential change-of-state token, rather than as a presentative particle. This reclassification better captures the core function of hine as marking the culmination of a perceptual shift, often following a search process, situating hine alongside other linguistic resources that signal conclusive points in interaction and aligning it with evidentiality. We believe that this reconceptualization may contribute to our understanding of hine while potentially offering insights for the broader study of presentative particles and change-of-state markers in interactive contexts. Future research should further investigate the implications of this proposal for cross-linguistic analyses of similar phenomena.