[B-Greek] Deixis

Kimmo Huovila kimmo.huovila at helsinki.fi
Mon Mar 1 05:03:18 EST 2004


On Saturday 28 February 2004 17:31, waldo slusher wrote:

> This definition seems arbitrary to me since relating
> deixis to the time of speaking is unnecessarily
> restrictive. I've no training in Linguistics, but why
> not define deixis in as a reference to a contextually
> developed temporal point? If this is done you
> illimiate the "reference time" and it simply becomes
> the deixis. Why the need to create two separate
> temporal points? I can see now why people have a hard
> time with contexts that are portrayed as existing in
> the past or future (such as the strange responses I
> see to the historic present).
> 
>  
Tense in some languages is relative to the deictic center (time of utterance) 
and in some languages relative to a reference point, which may or may not be 
identical with the time of utterance. The first group of languages have 
absolute tense, the second relative tense (Comrie, Tense, pp. 122-125). The 
distinction needs to be made somehow, because languages differ along this 
parameter. That's why there is a need for two terms.

Kimmo Huovila



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