On Wed, 28 Jan 2004 00:58:00 +1030, Morgan Palaeo Associates
<morganpalaeo@...> wrote:
>John Quijada wrote:
To use one
>> of Lakoff's great examples, compare the following two sentences:
>>
>> If I were you I'd hate me.
>>
>> If I were you I'd hate myself.
>>
>> Compare these 2 sentences as to which party (the speaker or the
addressee)
>> is being referred to by the word "me" in Sentence 1 versus "myself" in
>> Sentence 2. Chomskian theory has no way of explaining this switch.
>
>One explanation is [CREATIVE SNIP HERE BY J.Q.} the switch
>exherts a GRAVITATIONAL ATTRACTION pulling all first person references
>in the same direction - there is also a MAGNETIC REPULSION pushing
>whatever entity is in the accusative away from being the same as the
>entity in the nominative.
>please tell, what have *real* linguists come up with? :-)
>
>Adrian
>
>(one can be almost as creative with crackpot-linguistics-made-up-on-the-
spot
>as one can with conlangs).
------------
Very nice theorizing, Adrian. I should consider adding a GRAVITATIVE case
to Ithkuil! As for *real* reasons for the referential switch in Lakoff's
two sentences, that would take a message 500 lines long to explain because
I'd first have to explain Gilles Fauconnier's theory of "mental spaces." I
would refer you to any of several of his works in this area: The one he
edited with Eve Sweetser called "Mental Spaces" is excellent and I believe
contains the Lakoff article in which the "...I'd hate me/myself" examples
are given.