Re: THEORY: questions

In a message dated 10/22/01 3:14:14 AM, christophe.grandsire@FREE.FR writes:

<< I think this person has quite a narrow vision of what a language can be. A

little Western-centrist vision I'd say. >>

    HA, HA, HA, HA!!!  I love it!

<<I disagree. In French for instance the distinction is optional and has to be

done with adverbs. The demonstrative itself doesn't make the distinction.>>

    I think for a lot of these you missed the point and you got bogged down
with the actual words, which were used just to make it easier on Western
linguists since the list was meant to be a simple list not a long, drawn out
list of explanations.  So when it says "a proximal and distal demonstrative",
it doesn't need to have an actual word for each (many Creoles only have one),
but there needs to be some method in a language to indicate this thing and
that thing, if pressed, even if it's some phrase like "The thing that is far
from me" in those exact words.  Anyway, I think he should have used the word
"strategy" a lot more than he did.  Another thing: There is a way to show
definiteness vs. indefiniteness in Latin.  It's kind of cheap, but it's
there, nevertheless: Just use "hoc", etc.  It's a spatial deictic when there
actually is a space between the speaker and the thing referred to, true, but
what about in sentences like 'This girl of which you speak is of ill fame"?
(I have these sentences stored away from my Latin book; many of them are like
this.)  The point is that the use is a metaphorical extension to indicate
that the subject is the same as the previous sentence, and not some new girl
that's not a part of the conversation, and that is (if I'm not mistaken) the
point of definiteness vs. indefiniteness, is it not?
    Also, you raise an interesting point about the pronouns for three
persons.  Because there's a different list in my historical linguistics book
that tells common grammaticalizations in languages, and one of them is that
demonstratives often become third person pronouns.  If so, then they clearly
did not exist before.  And what about languages where pronoun use is being
slowly taken over by the verb, like Spanish?  They just might disappear
(well, probably not, but in theory).  So yeah, it seems like many languages
could get on without one, though I'd like to see an example of one.  Latin,
of course, has the third person coded into the verb, and demonstratives that
can mean "this/that" or "this one/that one", so you could easily get by
without one without having to repeat the noun.  I wonder how languages like
this do it?
    I'd argue that you don't need a word for "or".  It can be taken care of
by intonation and the word "and".
    Anyway, I didn't mean to post the list as a personal affront to anyone,
nor did I mean to put it forth as my own ideas.  So, I'm sorry if I insulted
anyone.

-David

Reply