Re: the day before yesterday etc. (was Re: Tenses (...))

Hello, everyone, and thanks for writing.
Hello and thanks, in particular, to Ray and Andreas.

In Stephen C. Levinson's 'Deixis and Pragmatics' chapter
for 'Handbook of Pragmatics', section 5.2 'Time Deixis', on page 38,
Levinson says "Yeli Dnye [a Papuan language spoken on Rossel Island]
recognizes the day as a diurnal unit, and has words for yesterday and
the day before, and special monomorphemic words for tomorrow, the day
after tomorrow and so forth for ten days into the future, and
thereafter a generative system for specifying days beyond that.  It
needs such a system because there is no concept of week, or any
larger clockwork system of calendrical units that can be tied to
coding time as in English /next March/."

(BTW I apologize for not being able to type Ye'li^ correctly, with an
acute accent over the e and a circumflex over the i.  For Yeli Dnye,
Levinson refers us to Jim Henderson 1995 'Phonology and the grammar
of Yele, Papua New Guinea" in "Pacific Linguistics, Series B-112".)

Levinson's chapter can be found at this URL:
http://www.mpi.nl/world/pub/handb-horn4.pdf

Tom H.C. in MI

--- In conlang@yahoogroups.com, Ray Brown <ray.brown@F...> wrote:
> On Tuesday, July 19, 2005, at 07:54 , Andreas Johansson wrote:
>
> > Quoting Ray Brown <ray.brown@F...>:
> >
> >> On Tuesday, July 19, 2005, at 12:40 , tomhchappell wrote:
> >> [snip]
> >>> Hindi has the same word for yesterday and tomorrow ..."
> >>
> >> Yep - it's /k@l/
> >>
> >> Also:
> >> /p@rso~/ = the day before yesterday _or_ the day after tomorrow
> >> /t@rso~/ = three days ago _or_ three days hence
> >> /p@rso~/ = four days ago _or_ four days hence
> >
> > Surely /p@rso~/ don't mean *both* yesteday/tomorrow and four days
> > ago/hence?
>
> OOOPS!!!!!
>
> The second one should be: /n@rso~/ = four days ago _or_ four days
hence
>
> /p@rso~/ means only 'the day before yesterday _or_ the day after
tomorrow'
>
> Sorry   :=(
>
> Ray
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