Re: Neither here nor there.

kam@CARROT.CLARA.NET wrote:

> On Fri, 1 Jun 2001, Jesse stephen bangs <jaspax@...> wrote:
>
> >> When puzzling over Praxian article endings (indefinite, definite, and
> >> demonstrative), for the life of me, I could not figure out just HOW they
> >> differentiated between local demonstrative "this thing" and distant
> >> demonstrative "that thing"--then it hit me.  Praxian does not distinguish
> >> between local and distant!
>
> > This is actually attested in real languages.  Ancient Greek had one word
> > "entautha" meaning "here" or "there," and words "erkhomai" and "eimi"
> > meaning "to come" or "to go."  And they weren't even nomadic ;-).
>
> Odd, most of the languages I've encountered have had either a two way
> (here/there, this/that) split, or a three way system (here/there/yonder).
> However the record, if my memory serves me right is probably held by
> Malagasy which has a seven-fold system going from "right here" to "way,
> way over yonder at the very limit of vision". Is this correct? I know there
> are one or two Malagasy guru's (olona kendry) on the list. Can anyone beat
> the record?
Malagasy actually distinguishes five degrees of distance, (very) roughly:

  -- in contact with the speaker
  -- very close to the speaker
  -- in the general area of the speaker
  -- away from the speaker
  -- far away from the speaker

Each of these demonstratives as two forms, one for visible things and one for
non-visible things.

There are two other demonstratives (giving a total of seven) but these two are
almost never used, and their meanings (as far as I've been able to tell) do not
involve any distance contrasts with the other five.

Matt.