Pronominally used demonstrative determiners (d-pronouns) in Hebrew and German can trigger negative appraisal if used for human referents, but only in certain contexts: i) when they do not compete with personal pronouns and ii) when they denote a contextually salient individual. We argue that the distribution of the negative appraisal is best analysed as the result of competition: because d-pronouns are syntactically more complex, their use over personal pronouns has to be justified. We further argue that the N-effect is the result of demoting a referent that could in principle be a discourse participant and hence could be referred to with a personal pronoun to a discourse referent. In other words, the use of the d-pronoun instead of the personal pronoun suggests that the referent is someone we only talk about but we don't talk with.