Re: USAGE: Miapimoquitch directionals

Dirk Elzinga wrote at 2003-06-16 12:39:28 (-0600)
 > On Monday, June 16, 2003, at 12:00  PM, Tim May wrote:
 >
[...]
 > > What's the point of reference of these directionals?
 >
 > The point of reference is contextually determined in the discourse.
 > Typically it will be the speaker, so that _taka-si_ will refer to
 > motion towards the speaker and _taka-hu_ will refer to motion away
 > from the speaker. However, in narratives this will change since the
 > narrator isn't always involved in the events being described. Right
 > now I have the impression that it isn't really much different than
 > English. For example, how do you know when to use 'come' and 'go'
 > when telling a story? I assume the same mechanisms will govern the
 > choice of directionals in Miapimoquitch. It's a question that I
 > haven't thought a lot about yet, but I knew that I didn't want a
 > system with absolute directionals (i.e., orienting events or
 > entities along compass points exclusively).
 >

Ah, very good.  It's my impression, though, that the contextual
meaning of such terms varies quite a lot cross-linguistically, so
there probably are some differences from English, even if the general
scheme is similar.

See e.g. the section headed "Deixis and the verbs 'to go' and 'to
come'" on this page here,
http://www.yale.edu/nahuatl/lessons/mainle04.html
which talks about the differences in use between English, Spanish and
Nahuatl (you have to scroll down)u.  It's not a terribly good source,
but I had it bookmarked.

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