Re: Neither here nor there.

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?

Keith

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