Presentation is, thus, a composite speech act:

• It draws the interlocutor's attention to a referent.
• It anchors this referent in the speech situation.

An operation with this twofold function is grammaticalized in presentative operators in many languages:

Likewise, Ancient Greek ἰδοὺ, Russian vot and Yucatec he' are presentative operators.

Given the second function of presentation, presentative operators sometimes allow deictic distinctions. For instance, French voilà ‘look there!’ contrasts with voici ‘look here!’.

Some presentative operators, including the Ancient Greek and French one, are transparently derived from imperative forms of the verb ‘see’.

The referent thus presented may be anything, from an object physically present in the speech situation (f) via something in the preceding discourse to a proposition to be considered ().

Languages lacking a presentative operator usually take the two functions of presentation apart:

• To draw the interlocutor's attention to a referent, an imperative form of the verb ‘look’ or ‘see’ may be employed. Sometimes, an existential sentence like French il y a X or English there is X suffices to fulfill this function.
• A demonstrative formative like ‘there’ or ‘here’ anchors the referent in the speech situation.