deixis in Rioplatense Spanish

Rioplatense Spanish distinguishes three distances in its demonstratives, este near the speaker, ese at a middle distance or near the addressee, and aquel far from both, and the same three way contrast runs through the place adverbs acá or aquí, ahí, and allá or allí. Every demonstrative form commits to one of the three, so a speaker who uses a demonstrative at all cannot avoid the choice, which is what the obligatory value records. The point the distance is measured from is the speaker for the near term and the addressee for the middle term, which is the reference point property the dimension names as separate from distance. The language marks neither visibility nor vertical position. The third person pronouns él, ella and ellos depend on the context of utterance for their reference, as the dimension notes such pronouns commonly do, but they carry no distance value of their own.