4,600 years ago? I'vegot unwashed socks older than that.
But we are here forAnnabel's query, and I am now interested in
some4,600 years ago
Shoshanasays,
Well as far as I am concerned it instantiates circumstantial meaning,telling us
when something happened and it’s also fairly uncommitted– they are not saying
EXACTLY when, just roughly when. It answersthe probe question of circumstance
location time: when?
I don't understand whatit could mean to 'instantiate circumstantial meaning'.
That doesn'tseem like something I would want to do. And I doubt whether
Shoshanaunderstands either. Yes, my instincts tell me that it has somethingto
do with 'time', but it is poor form to be relying on instincts, sothe question
should probably be what is it that tells me? or perhapsfar more aptly, what it
is that 'points me' to time? and 'years' and'ago' should possibly serve as a
clue. But, the problem here wouldbe, that I am not arguing 'grammatically'.
And, this is not acriticism, but I see very few grammatical arguments here in
thisdiscussion, and I fail to see linguistic structure, to boot, ifthat's your
idea of fun. But, enough fun, this should be veryimportant for us.
My grandfather got shot in the Khyber Pass
In fact, my grandfatherwas not shot in the Khyber Pass, he died in Changi, and
in sayingthat he died in Changi, I don't mean precisely that, since I knowthat
although he started off in Changi, he actually died somewherenear the Myanmar
border with Thailand, and even that isn't quiteaccurate, since in my thinking,
he died in 'Burma'. So, when I saythat he died in Changi, what 'I say', and
what you hear, are rathersubstantially different things. And Changi, Myanmar,
and Burma, arenot similarly 'meaningful' to you and to me, or even to me
atdifferent points in time.
This matters to what weare doing here, and what we think we are doing. And
even, note howeasy it is for us to deal with 'here', when what 'here' might
be,would seem to be on your screen, or perhaps lurking in the pixels.
So,
My grandfather got shot in the Khyber Pass.
Or perhaps not quiteyet.
Within some of thediscussion here, we are assiduously attempting to identify
structuralcomponents of nominal groups, and with that 'circumstances'(something
like prepositional phrases) applying skills carefullydeveloped over a rather
long period of training and studyinglinguistic analyses, such that we are able
to produce substantialimportant conclusions from those analyses. But, at some
point, our'linguistic analyses' produce results with which we may be not
quitesatisfied. And our commitment to 'linguistic' analyses may be (bywhich I
mean 'is') obscuring whether what we are analysing isactually 'language'. Are
the analyses of the nominal group which have seen recently promoted in systemic
linguistics, actually linguisticanalyses, or rather, fully dependent on
cognition and the nature ofthe 'entities' involved, that is, 'is language
construing or beingconstrued', and more generally, 'Is language dependent on
context?'(which I would like to be understood broadly) or 'Is contextdependent
on language?'.
So, I am drawn to thecomparison of
My grandfather got shot in the Khyber Pass.
and,
My grandfather got shot in the Khyber Pass.
I am strongly inclinedto say that these two clauses are identical, but there
are somesubtleties of presentation. The fact that I have juxtaposed
themspatially, entails that they are not identical, and sets them up
forcontrast, but I am going to pretend that that is not the case. Andthough I
may want to say that the two clauses are identical, some ofthe older of you who
have watched too many Carry on movies, mightidentify some difference between
the two. The identified difference,if such there be, is not to be found in the
'language' as it appears.Perhaps we could (and would) detect subtle differences
in intonationbut that is not where the 'meaning' differences are to be found.
Somemight want to say that the differences between the two clauses
are'structural' differences, but no 'structural differences' will dealwith what
I see here, and in any case, any 'structural' 'differencewould need be a
product of my understanding of the entities involved,rather than vice-versa.
Relatedly, language, ora language system, doesn't tell me that there is a
relation between'ago' or 'away'. I know, in my language independent lived life,
thatthere is a relation between 'ago' and 'away', but this relationshipis not
between 'words', but between place x and place y, or betweentime a and time b.
David's contrast here is useful.
some 4,600 years ago : Time ::
about4,600 miles away : Place
and I am happy to seethat the contrast is a matter of time and place, but there
is nothingabout 'language' per se which produces the distinction, it is
adifference between kinds of things, of time and place, as years aredifferent
from miles.
Incidentally, Iunderstood the issue of distance between things, well before I
couldsay 'between'.
But before proceeding,a cautionary tale. We need to be careful with what we
mean by 'time'.'Some 4,600 years ago' sets up a distance between what at
firstappears two 'times', 'then' and 'now'. But, essentially, 'then' and'now'
are empty signifiers, deictic elements akin to 'this' and'that'. 'Then' and
'now' are deictic to states of affairs which mayor do change. Some 4,600 years
ago is 4,600 years in the past fromnow, presuming that 'ago' is not a typo of
'agogo'. That is, 4,600years ago is ago from now. The 4,600 years ago, is not
much ofitself, but substantially more as the event to which it points, towhit,
the formation of the earth. Whereas 'now' might be thought ofas a speech act,
as the time of utterance. But, the temporaldistance between the formation of
the earth and my or anybody else'sspeech act, seems like a rather strange
distance, even embarassing,especially for me, as I don't produce speech acts,
but it might be areasonable temporal distance between the state of the world as
thisissue is being discussed, that is, the (degenerating) state of theworld
'now' with its building and border-collies, and lessimportantly humans, in
contrast with the state of the(pre-incipient) world 4,600 years ago.
But of course, my nowstate of affairs is not yours, and is certainly not
Davids. His'then', 4,600 years ago, is dramatically more
elaborated,sophisticated and complex, than mine.
We need to be (very)careful of 'grammar' and arguing grammatically, at the risk
ofundermining the extraordinary achievements of SFL. Grammatically, forexample
we might be willing to say that 'this is my nephew' isreversible to 'my nephew
is this', and imagining that we are dealingwith 'language' leads us to imagine
that naming of 'components' is tobe doing something, and it is to do something
to recognize that 'thisis my brother' and 'my brother is this' are both
identifyingrelational processes. But 'this is my brother' is a far far
differentutterance to 'my brother is this', with the differences notaccountable
for through interpersonal or textual meanings. To equatethe two 'clauses' is
wildly reductive. In any case, to treat 'this'and 'my nephew' as language could
of itself be worryingly reductive,but less problematically if we aware of what
we are doing.
Sorry, I'll have tostop here. I need to wash some socks.
On Monday, 5 February 2024 at 00:56:14 GMT, Annabelle Lukin
<annabelle.lukin@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
#yiv9610243041 P {margin-top:0;margin-bottom:0;}Dear colleagues,
I'm keen to hear thoughts on the analysis of this clause:
The earth formed some 4,600 years ago from a vast cloud of gas and dust.
CheersAnnabelle
Annabelle Lukin (she, her, hers)
Associate Professor Linguistics
Department HDR Director
Department of Linguistics
Level 5, 12 Second Way Room 507
Macquarie University, NSW 2109, Australia
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Latest book chapterLukin, Annabelle and Butt, David. 2022. Neurosemiotics and
ideology: a linguistic view. In García, Adolfo, and Ibañez, Águstin (eds)
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Latest journal articleLukin, Annabelle, and Araújo e Castro, Rodrigo. 2022.
Macquarie Laws of War Corpus (MQLWC): design, construction and use.
International Journal for the Semiotics of Law. 35(5). 2167-2186.
