[B-Greek] Deixis

Kimmo Huovila kimmo.huovila at helsinki.fi
Tue Mar 9 02:42:56 EST 2004


I was not able to do my email for a while, but I add some late comments 
nevertheless.

On Wednesday 03 March 2004 23:12, waldo slusher wrote:
> > "In September I will have written my dissertation"
> > (and will therefore be
> > available for employment).
> 
> Notice how different your sentence is to the following
> one:
> 
> "In the beginning was the word and the word was with
> God..."
> 
> Do you see immediately a "temporal" difference in
> these two KINDS of sentences/propositions? Your
> sentence has a default Deictic Point as the time of
> writing because you are making a statement IN RELATION
> TO THE TIME OF WRITING. (Other wise, you could have
> said, "In September I had already written...)
> 
> My sentence clearly has no default Deictic Point; that
> is, there is no statement being made about the
> relationship of the sentence to the time of writing. I
> am simply making a factual statement. If a temporal
> element is to be discovered, the author will have to
> develop one (known as contextually developed DC).
> 
Actually both sentences have deictic elements. The word 'was' refers to time 
anterior to the deicitc point. In other words, the existence of the word is 
before the time of writing (though Waldo probably would say also before the 
beginning, not just writing).

> So, in my sentence (actually, John's), the Deictic
> Point is said to be CONTEXTUALLY DEVELOPED. The DC is
> "In the beginning." From this point, the Imperfect
> takes us BACKWARD to a place PRIOR TO the DC. (The
> Imperfect does not take us backward FROM THE TIME OF
> JOHN'S WRITING, although that happens to be true.)
> 
Similarly, in John 2:1 (KAI THi hHMERAi THi TRITHi GAMOS EGENETO EN KANA THS 
GALILAIAS, KAI HN hH MHTHR TOU IHSOU EKEI), Mary was in Cana before the 
wedding and could not have arrived late? I am not convinced 
we can make the deduction from the tense. If I understand Waldo correctly, if 
Mary arrived late, it should say KAI ESTIN hH MHTHR...EKEI. I feel Levinsohn 
(Discourse Features of NT Greek, pp. 200-201)  is closer to truth when he 
says that the historical present (as opposed to imperfect or aorist) 
highlights the events to follow. Thus whether here is HN or ESTIN has to do 
with what is highlighted in the narrative, not on whether Mary was late. I am 
not completely sure I understood Waldo's view correctly, though.

I know that not all linguists use terms similarly. P.H.Matthews says in 
Concise Dictionary of Linguistics (deixis) that "For further extensions, 
which start to stretch the sense beyond coherent definition, see discourse 
deixis, social deixis." In other words, the term is not always used 
consistently. I am not surprised if different Greek scholars use the word in 
slightly different senses.

Deixis is a useful concept since there are a lot of expressions in language 
that are tied to the actual speaking time, location, addressees etc. I do not 
altogether reject the idea of pragmatically moving the deictic center. By 
this I mean that deictic expressions are used as if the deictic center is not 
the coding time. Stephen Levinson (Pragmatics, p. 64) lists the following 
points that are usually central in deixis: 1) the central person is the 
speaker 2) the central time is the time the speaker produces the utterance 3) 
the central place is the speakers location at the utterance time or CT 
(=coding time) 4) the discourse center is the point which the speaker is 
currently at in the production of his utterance 5) the social center is the 
speaker's social status or rank. He further notes that sometimes the deictic 
center can be shifted to other participants. I would add that sometimes it 
may be shifted away from coding time to receiving time (eg. in a letter "now 
that you are reading this...").

The question of terminology is basically how much do we want to stretch the 
meaning of deixis and at what point other terms (such as reference point) 
become more useful and less confusing. I reacted to the terminology because 
Waldo's definition seemed to exclude the normal, most common way I have seen 
the term used in pragmatics textbooks. However, I did speak of shifting the 
deictic center in connection with the historical present in my MA thesis. I 
do not remember being chided for wrong terminology in this case.

Penner wrote:
>"In September I will have written my dissertation" (and will therefore be
> available for employment).

> I would guess Waldo would say Speech Time is approx. 5:00 March 2, the
> Deictic Centre is September, the Reference Time is the time of completion
> (say August 15), and the Event Time is 2003-2004 (the period during which I
> was writing the dissertation). I find this description satisfying, but I'm
> not sure its what linguists would understand by the terms.

March 2 would be the deictic center. Event time (if understood as the 
completion of writing, as the expression is aspectually perfective) follows 
the deictic center but precedes September (you can call it reference time).

> It seems Olsen would say the Deictic Centre=Speech Time, September is the
> Reference Time, and Event Time intersects Reference Time at its Coda
> (September?) What then happens to the gap between August 15 and September?
> Event time only lasts until August 15, and the Reference Time isn't until
> two weeks later. How can the two intersect?

I am not familiar enough on Olsen' terminology to be sure what he means. There 
are more qualified list members to answer this (Rolf etc.), but I wonder if 
Olsen's description refers to imperfectives. 'Will have written' is 
perfective. The imperfective (or better still, progressive) counterpart would 
be 'will have been writing'.

Kimmo Huovila




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