[B-Greek] Deixis
Penner
pennerkm at mcmaster.ca
Tue Mar 2 17:26:29 EST 2004
I've been interested in the thread on Deixis between Waldo and Kimmo because
I need to get my terminology right. I do not get the impression that writers
use their terms consistently.
Of Comrie, McKay, Fanning, Porter, and Olsen (to keep the discussion to
scholars writing on Greek), I find Olsen most (but not totally) convincing.
So a question for the linguists on the list: in the example below, what
labels should we give the following time points: the time I make the
statement, the moment the dissertation is completed, September, the time of
writing the dissertation.
"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.
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?
> Deixis is reference by means of an expression whose
> interpretation is relative to the (usually)
> extralinguistic context of the utterance, such as
>
> who is speaking
> the time or place of speaking
> the gestures of the speaker, or
> the current location in the discourse.
>
>
> This definition seems to support Kimmo's contention
> that deixis refers to the time of speaking or current
> location.
>
> I did note in the definition the (usually), which
> leaves open the idea of deixis being developed around
> a different temporal point.
>
> 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
> eliminate 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).
>
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