Re: Deictics was Re: Definite/Indefinite Article Distinction

Quoting Philip Newton <Philip.Newton@...>:

> On 8 Sep 02, at 9:36, Thomas R. Wier wrote:
>
> > Quoting Joe <joe@...>:
> >
> > > From: "Thomas R. Wier" <trwier@...>
> > > > Right, I agree more or less with that statement. But even
> > > > if Scots were a dialect, there would be other dialects
> > > > that have just three.  A number of American dialects still
> > > > use _yonder_.
> > >
> > > As an adjective usually, isn't it?  'Yonder castle' is not usual,
> > > you'd use 'that castle yonder'
> >
> > Yes, that's possible.  I don't speak one of these dialects and
> > haven't read much on it, so I can't really say much about
> > frequency.
>
> I believe a pronominal form is "yon" as in "yon castle", but that's not
> in my dialect, either.
Come to think of it, I'm pretty sure that _yonder_ is still
grammatical for *bare* adjectival uses: "yonder castle".  I'm
not sure that any dialect still uses _yon_;  certainly, I could
imagine using _yonder_ in informal situations today in a way that
I could not imagine using _yon_ without deliberately trying to
sound archaic.

================================
John Cowan slabronten:
> Thomas R. Wier scripsit:
>
> > As an adjective usually, isn't it?  'Yonder castle' is not usual,
> > you'd use 'that castle yonder'
>
> _Romeo and Juliet_ says "What light from yonder window breaks?"
Right ;)  That sounds less archaic to me than _yon_, which
I'd probably never use.

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Thomas Wier            "I find it useful to meet my subjects personally,
Dept. of Linguistics    because our secret police don't get it right
University of Chicago   half the time." -- octogenarian Sheikh Zayed of
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Chicago, IL 60637