Defining pronominal series: Demonstratives in West Circassian

We discuss the concept of “pronominal series” and some principles that can be used for distinguishing pronominal series from similar phenomena. These principles are further applied to demonstratives in West Circassian (a polysynthetic language of the West Caucasian family) as represented in a large corpus including texts of various genres. We show that West Circassian displays at least eleven series of demonstratives but also make additional observations on how the principles defining pronominal series can be used in complex cases.