four classes of particles with demonstrative functions. Each class is made up of three particles of different degrees of distance; proximal, medial, or distal. This is a three-way distinction, similar to Samoan and Māori, two closely related languages from the same language family. Tongan, by contrast, has a two-way contrast. Rapa Nui speakers hence distinguish between entities that are close to the speaker (proximal), something at a medium distance or close to the hearer (medial), and something far away, removed from both the speaker and hearer (distal). This is called a person-oriented system, in which one of the demonstratives denotes a referent in proximity of the hearer. For Rapa Nui speakers, that is the medial distinction, //. This system of spatial contrasts and directions is known as spatial deixis, and Rapa Nui is full of ways to express this, be it through locationals, postverbal or postnominal demonstratives, or directionals. These four classes that function as demonstratives are similar in form, but differ in syntactic status and have certain differences in functions. Postnominal Demonstratives The postnominal demonstratives are used to indicate different degrees of distance. They always occur on the right periphery of the noun phrase. Postnominal demonstratives are obligatory when following a t-demonstrative (tau/tou/tū) unless the noun phrase contains the identity marker ā/ ana. They can also co-occur with other determiners, like articles in this example: Postnominal demonstratives can be used deictically or anaphorically. As deictic markers they are used to point at something visible, while as anaphoric markers they refer to entities in discourse context (entities which have been discussed before or are known by other means). In practice, the anaphoric use is much more common. Distal/Neutral era is used deictically to point to something at a distance from both speaker and hearer. However, it's more common to see used anaphorically, as a general purpose demonstrative. is often found co-occurring with the neutral t-demonstrative determiner, as the general form tau/tou/tū (N) era, and this combination doubles as a common strategy to refer to a participant mentioned earlier in the discourse. So common, that era is the seventh most common word overall in the text corpus. For example, the two main characters in this story are simply referred to as tau taŋata era 'that man' and tau vi e era 'that woman'. era is also used in combination anaphorically with te, a more conventional determiner instead of a demonstrative determiner.