[lit-ideas] This, That, and Th'Other

  • From: Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx
  • To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Tue, 26 Jun 2012 17:43:32 -0400 (EDT)

Or is it...
This, that, and yon.
 
The idea is
 
PROXIMAL: "This" (cited by Witters, below)
 
DISTAL: "That" 
 
AND 

MEDIAL. Originally, "That" was MEDIAL, and "yonder" was DISTAL. (I  refer 
only to English, rather than Persian). 
From wiki:
 
"A distal demonstrative exists in German, cognate to the English  yonder."
 
"Demonstrative pronouns in English: PROXIMAL: this, MEDIAL: that,  DISTAL: 
yon. Author Bill Bryson laments the "losses along the way" of  yon: "Today 
we have two demonstrative pronouns, this and that [Witters only  uses 'this'] 
but in Shakespeare's day there was a third, yon (as in the Milton  line 
"Him that yon soars on golden wing"), which suggested a further distance  than 
that. You could talk about this hat, that hat, and yon hat. Today the word  
survives as a colloquial adjective, yonder, but our speech is fractionally  
impoverished for its loss". 
 
R. Paul:

"[U]ntil the ambiguity is removed in ordinary
language, i.e.,  whether
 
'Every boy loves some girl.'
 
means
 
'Every boy loves some girl, namely, Alice.'
 
or
 
'Every boy loves some girl or other.'"
 
Note that 'or other' should perhaps be disambiguated too:
 
as in "this, that, and th'OTHER".
 
"Every boy loves some girl, Alice, or another girl, Lorina"
 
(Lorina is Alice Hargreaves's sister). 

But I know focus not to much on 'other' ("th'other") but on "this" as  used 
by Witters.

In a message dated 6/26/2012 5:10:23 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time,  
rpaul@xxxxxxxx quotes extensively from Witters.

Some running  commentary:

"If I were to reserve the word "pain" solely for what I  had
hitherto called "my pain", and others "L.W.'s pain", I should do
other  people no injustice, so long as a notation were provided in which
the loss of  the word "pain" in other connexions were somehow
supplied."

-----  

cfr. 

"my name"

"Grice's  name".

---



"Other people would still be pitied, treated by  doctors and
so on. It would, of course, be no objection to this mode of  expression
to say: "But look here, other people have just the same as  you!"
But what should I gain from this new kind of account? Nothing.
But  after all neither does the solipsist want any practical advantage
when he  advances his view!"

"When I say 'I am in pain', I do not point to a  person who is
in pain, since in a certain sense I have no idea who is." And  this can 
be given a justification. For the main point is: I did not say that  
such-and such a person was in pain, but "I am  . . . . . " Now in  saying 
this I don't name any person."

---

i.e. 

"my  pain" 

versus

"Ludwig Wittgenstein's pain"

--  

--

"Just as I don't name anyone when I groan 
with pain.  Though someone else sees who is in pain from the
groaning. What does it mean  to know who is in pain? It means, for 
example, to know which man in this  room is in pain: for instance, that 
it is the one who is sitting over there,  or the one who is standing in 
that corner, the tall one over there with the  fair hair, and so on.—What 
am I getting at? At the fact that there is a  great variety of criteria 
for personal 'identity'''."

but the good  one is memory -- vide Grice, "Personal Identity", Mind, 1941, 
repr. in Perry,  "Personal Identity" with an intro by Perry who, I think, 
does not dedicate ONE  line to Witters.

"Now which of them determines my saying that 
'/' am  in pain? None." ""But at any rate when you say 'I am in pain', you 
want  to
draw the attention of others to a particular person."—The answer
might  be: No, I want to draw their attention to myself.—"

The implicature seems  to be that Witters did not think of himself as a 
_person_ -- never mind a  "particular" one.

(Why does he have to have those idiots as  interlocutors. Socrates always 
did better than that!).

""But surely what  you want to do with the words 'I  am. . . .'
is to distinguish between  yourself and other people."—Can this be said
in every case? Even when I  merely groan? And even if I do 'want
to distinguish' between myself and other  people—do I want to distinguish 
between the person L.W. and the person N.N.?  ... It would be possible to 
imagine someone groaning out:
"Someone is in  pain—I don't know who!"—and our then hurrying
to help him, the one who  groaned. "Someone is in pain—I don't know 
who!"—and our then hurrying to  help him, the one who groaned. ... "But you 
aren't in doubt whether it is you or  someone else
who has the pain!"—The proposition "I don't know whether I
or  someone else is in pain" would be a logical product, and one of its
factors  would be: "I don't know whether I am in pain or not"—
and that is not a  significant proposition."

I could find a scenario. What SEEMS otiose,  rather, is the "or not". I 
think

"I don't know whether I am in pain"  

should be enough.

Witters seems to think of this as nonsensical,  which would presuppose that 
he takes this as tautologous:

I am in  pain
----- Therefore, I know that I am in pain.

-----

(Others  restrict the use of 'know' to more interesting scenarios. The use 
of 'know'  there seems otiose in that nobody ever claimed to DOUBT that the 
utterer was in  pain when he uttered, "I am in pain"".

Cfr.

A: I am in pain.
B:  Are you really?

----


"Imagine several people standing in a  ring, and me among them.
One of us, sometimes this one, sometimes that, is  connected to the
poles of an electrical machine without our being able to see  this. I
observe the faces of the others and try to see which of us has just  been
electrified.—Then I say: "Now I know who it is; for it's myself."
In  this sense I could also say: "Now I know who is getting the shocks;
it is  myself." This would be a rather queer way of speaking.—But if I
make the  supposition that I can feel the shock even when someone
else is electrified,  then the expression "Now I know who . . . ."
becomes quite unsuitable. It  does not belong to this game.
... "I" is not the name of a person, nor "here"  of a place, and
"this" is not a name. But they are connected with names.  Names are
explained by means of them. It is also true that it is  characteristic of
physics not to use these words."

"These words," as  Witters calls them, are 'deictic', and while physics 
doesn't use them,  physicists do.

Mrs Einstein: Where are you?
Einstein: I'm here.   (Note the use of "I" and "here" in the same sentence)
Mrs Einstein: I know  that. Can you be more specific?
Einstein: What's _this_? an  interrogation?

(Below some notes from wiki on 'deixis').
 
Cheers,
 
Speranza
 
Deixis refers to the phenomenon wherein understanding the meaning of  
certain words and phrases in an utterance requires contextual information. 
Words  
are deictic if their semantic meaning is fixed but their denotational 
meaning  varies depending on time and/or place. 
 
Words or phrases that require contextual information to convey any meaning  
– for example, English pronouns – are deictic. Deixis is closely related 
to both  indexicality and anaphora, as will be further explained below. 
Although this  article deals primarily with deixis in spoken language, the 
concepts can apply  to written language, gestures, and communication media as 
well. While this  article draws examples primarily from English, deixis is 
believed to be a  feature (to some degree) of all natural languages.
 
The term’s origin is Ancient Greek: δείξις deixis "display, 
demonstration,  or reference", the meaning point of reference in contemporary 
linguistics having  been taken over from Chrysippus.
 
Possibly the most common categories of contextual information referred to  
by deixis are those of person, place, and time - what Fillmore calls the “
major  grammaticalized types” of deixis.[3]

Person deixis concerns itself with the grammatical persons involved in an  
utterance, (1) those directly involved (e.g. the speaker, the addressee), 
(2)  those not directly involved (e.g. overhearers—those who hear the 
utterance but  who are not being directly addressed), and (3) those mentioned 
in the 
 utterance.[4] In English, the distinctions are generally indicated by 
pronouns.  The following examples show how. (The person deictic terms are in 
italics, a  signaling notation that will continue through this article.)

I am going to the movies.

Would you like to have dinner?

They tried to hurt me, but he came to the rescue.

In many languages, the third-person masculine pronoun is often used as a  
default when using "it" is inappropriate but the gender of its antecedent is  
unknown or inapplicable.
For example:

To each his own.
Also common is the use of the third-person plural, even  when a singular 
pronoun is called for:

To each their own.
Less common is the usage of the gender-neutral  pronoun "zir":

To each zir own.
In some languages which distinguish between masculine  and feminine plural 
pronouns, such as French, the masculine is again used as  default. "Ils vont 
à la bibliothèque" may refer either to a group of males or a  group which 
comprises both genders. "Elles vont..." would only be used for a  group of 
females. In Cherokee, however, the opposite is true. The feminine  pronoun is 
used when the sex is unknown or if it is a man within a group of  women.


Place deixis, also known as space deixis, concerns itself with the spatial  
locations relevant to an utterance. Similarly to person deixis, the 
locations  may be either those of the speaker and addressee or those of persons 
or 
objects  being referred to. The most salient English examples are the 
adverbs “here” and  “there” and the demonstratives “this” and “that” - 
although those are far from  being the only deictic words.[3]
Some examples:

I enjoy living in this city.

Here is where we will place the statue.
She was sitting over  there.
Unless otherwise specified, place deictic terms are generally  understood 
to be relative to the location of the speaker, as in
The shop is  across the street.
where “across the street” is understood to mean “across  the street from 
where I am right now.”[3] It is interesting to note that while  “here” and “
there” are often used to refer to locations near to and far from the  
speaker, respectively, “there” can also refer to the location of the addressee, 
 
if they are not in the same location as the speaker. So, while
Here is a good  spot; it is too sunny over there.
exemplifies the former usage,
How is the  weather there?
is an example of the latter.
 
Languages usually show at least a two-way referential distinction in their  
deictic system: proximal, i.e. near or closer to the speaker, and distal, 
i.e.  far from the speaker and/or closer to the addressee. English 
exemplifies this  with such pairs as this and that, here and there, etc.
In other languages,  the distinction is three-way: proximal, i.e. near the 
speaker, medial, i.e. near  the addressee, and distal, i.e. far from both. 
This is the case in a few Romance  languages and in Korean, Japanese, Thai, 
Filipino and Turkish The archaic  English forms yon and yonder (still 
preserved in some regional dialects) once  represented a distal category which 
has 
now been subsumed by the formerly medial  "there".[5]


Time, or temporal, deixis concerns itself with the various times  involved 
in and referred to in an utterance. This includes time adverbs like  "now", 
"then", "soon", and so forth, and also different tenses. A good example  is 
the word tomorrow, which denotes the consecutive next day after every day.  
The "tomorrow" of a day last year was a different day from the "tomorrow" of 
a  day next week. Time adverbs can be relative to the time when an 
utterance is  made (what Fillmore calls the "encoding time", or ET) or when the 
utterance is  heard (Fillmore’s "decoding time", or DT).[3] While these are 
frequently the  same time, they can differ, as in the case of prerecorded 
broadcasts or  correspondence. For example, if one were to write
It is raining out now, but  I hope when you read this it will be sunny.
the ET and DT would be different,  with the former deictic term concerning 
ET and the latter the DT.
Tenses are  generally separated into absolute (deictic) and relative 
tenses. So, for  example, simple English past tense is absolute, such as in
He went.
while  the pluperfect is relative to some other deictically specified time, 
as in
He  had gone.

Though the traditional categories of deixis are perhaps the most obvious,  
there are other types of deixis that are similarly pervasive in language 
use.  These categories of deixis were first discussed by Fillmore and  Lyons.[4]

Discourse deixis, also referred to as text deixis, refers to the use of  
expressions within an utterance to refer to parts of the discourse that 
contains  the utterance — including the utterance itself. 
 
For example, in
This is a great story.


“this” refers to an upcoming portion of the discourse, and in
That was  an amazing day.


“that” refers to a prior portion of the discourse.
Distinction must be  made between discourse deixis and anaphora, which is 
when an expression makes  reference to the same referent as a prior term, as 
in
Matthew is an  incredible athlete; he came in first in the race.
Lyons points out that it is  possible for an expression to be both deictic 
and anaphoric at the same time. In  his example
I was born in London and I have lived here/there all my  life.
“here” or “there” function anaphorically in their reference to London,  
and deictically in that the choice between “here” or “there” indicates 
whether  the speaker is or is not currently in London.[1]
The rule of thumb to  distinguish the two phenomena is as follows: when an 
expression refers to  another linguistic expression or a piece of discourse, 
it is discourse deictic.  When that expression refers to the same item as a 
prior linguistic expression,  it is anaphoric.[4]
Switch reference is a type of discourse deixis, and a  grammatical feature 
found in some languages, which indicates whether the  argument of one clause 
is the same as the argument of the previous clause. In  some languages, 
this is done through same subject markers and different subject  markers. In 
the translated example "John punched Tom, and left-[same subject  marker]," it 
is John who left, and in "John punched Tom, and left-[different  subject 
marker]," it is Tom who left.[citation needed]

Social deixis  concerns the social information that is encoded within 
various expressions, such  as relative social status and familiarity. Two major 
forms of it are the  so-called T-V distinctions and honorifics.
[

T-V distinctions, named for the Latin “tu” and “vos” (singular and  
plural versions of “you”) are the name given to the phenomenon when a language  
has two different second-person pronouns. The varying usage of these 
pronouns  indicates something about formality, familiarity, and/or solidarity 
between the  interactants. So, for example, the T form might be used when 
speaking to a  friend or social equal, whereas the V form would be used 
speaking to 
a stranger  or social superior. This phenomenon is common in European  
languages.[6]

Honorifics are a much more complex form of social deixis  than T-V 
distinctions, though they encode similar types of social information.  They can 
involve words being marked with various morphemes as well as nearly  entirely 
different lexicons being used based on the social status of the  interactants. 
This type of social deixis is found in a variety of languages, but  is 
especially common in South and East Asia.[6]

Generally speaking,  anaphora refers to the way in which a word or phrase 
relates to other  text:
An exophoric reference refers to language outside of the text in which  the 
reference is found.
A homophoric reference is a generic phrase that  obtains a specific meaning 
through knowledge of its context. For example, the  meaning of the phrase 
"the Queen" may be determined by the country in which it  is spoken. Because 
there are many Queens throughout the world, the location of  the speaker 
provides the extra information that allows an individual Queen to be  
identified.
An endophoric reference refers to something inside of the text in  which 
the reference is found.
An anaphoric reference, when opposed to  cataphora, refers to something 
within a text that has been previously  identified. For example, in "Susan 
dropped the plate. It shattered loudly" the  word "it" refers to the phrase 
"the 
plate".
A cataphoric reference refers to  something within a text that has not yet 
been identified. For example, in "He  was very cold. David promptly put on 
his coat" the identity of the "he" is  unknown until the individual is also 
referred to as "David".


A deictic center, sometimes referred to as an origo, is a set of  
theoretical points that a deictic expression is ‘anchored’ to, such that the  
evaluation of the meaning of the expression leads one to the relevant point. As 
 
deictic expressions are frequently egocentric, the center often consists of 
the  speaker at the time and place of the utterance, and additionally, the 
place in  the discourse and relevant social factors. However, deictic 
expressions can also  be used in such a way that the deictic center is 
transferred 
to other  participants in the exchange, or to persons / places / etc. being 
described in a  narrative.[4] So, for example, in the sentence
I’m standing here now.
the  deictic center is simply the person at the time and place of speaking. 
But say  two people are talking on the phone long-distance, from London to 
New York. The  Londoner can say
We are going to New York next week.
in which case the  deictic center is in London, or they can equally validly 
say
We are coming to  New York next week.
in which case the deictic center is in New York.[1]  Similarly, when 
telling a story about someone, the deictic center is likely to  switch to them. 
So 
then in the sentence
He then ran twenty feet to the  left.
it is understood that the center is with the person being spoken of,  and 
thus, "to the left" refers not to the speaker’s left, but to the object of  
the story’s left, that is, the person referred to as 'he' at the time  
immediately before he ran twenty feet.


It is helpful to distinguish between two usages of deixis, gestural and  
symbolic, as well as non-deictic usages of frequently deictic words. Gestural  
deixis refers, broadly, to deictic expressions whose understanding requires 
some  sort of audio-visual information. A simple example is when an object 
is pointed  at and referred to as “this” or “that”. However, the category 
can include other  types of information than pointing, such as direction of 
gaze, tone of voice,  and so on. Symbolic usage, by contrast, requires 
generally only basic  spatio-temporal knowledge of the utterance.[4] So, for 
example
I broke this  finger.
requires being able to see which finger is being held up,  whereas
I love this city.
requires only knowledge of the current location.  In a similar vein,
I went to this city one time …
is a non-deictic usage  of "this", which does not reference anything 
specific. Rather, it is used as an  indefinite article, much the way "a" could 
be 
used in its place.

The terms deixis and indexicality are frequently used almost  
interchangeably, and both deal with essentially the same idea: contextually  
dependent 
references. However, the two terms have different histories and  traditions. 
In the past, deixis was associated specifically with spatiotemporal  
reference whereas indexicality was used more broadly.[7] More importantly, each 
 is 
associated with a different field of study; deixis is associated with  
linguistics, while indexicality is associated with philosophy.[8]

See also
Indexicality
Anaphora
Demonstrative
Generic  antecedents
Pro-form

References
^ a b c Lyons, John (1977) "Deixis, space and time" in  Semantics, Vol. 2, 
pp. 636–724. Cambridge University Press.
^ Stoica  2,65.
^ a b c d Fillmore, Charles J (1971) Lectures on Deixis. CSLI  Publications 
(reprinted 1997).
^ a b c d e f Levinson, Stephen C. "Deixis" in  Pragmatics. pp. 54–96.
^ Lyons, Christopher. Definiteness. Cambridge  University Press, 1999. p. 
111.
^ a b Foley, William. 1997. Anthropological  linguistics: An introduction. 
Blackwell Publishing.
^ Silverstein, Michael.  (1976) "Shifters, linguistic categories, and 
cultural description". In K. Basso  and H. Selby (eds.), Meaning in 
Anthropology. 
SAR pp. 25.
^ Levinson, Stephen  C. (2006) "Deixis". In Laurence R. Horn, Gregory L. 
Ward (eds.) The Handbook of  Pragmatics, pp. 978–120. Blackwell Publishing.

REFERENCES

Anderson, Stephen R.; & Keenan, Edward L. (1985). Deixis. In T.  Shopen 
(Ed.), Language typology and syntactic description: Grammatical  categories and 
the lexicon (Vol. 3, pp. 259–308). Cambridge: Cambridge  University Press.
Fillmore, Charles J. (1966). Deictic categories in the  semantics of ‘come’
. Foundations of Language, 2, 219–227.
Fillmore, Charles  J. (1982). Towards a descriptive framework for spatial 
deixis. In R. J. Jarvell  & W. Klein (Eds.), Speech, place and action: 
Studies in deixis and related  topics (pp. 31–59). London: Wiley.
Gaynesford, M. de I: The Meaning of the  First Person Term, Oxford, Oxford 
University Press, 2006.
Traut, Gregory P.  and Kazzazi, Kerstin. 1996. Dictionary of Language and 
Linguistics. Routledge.  London and New York. 
 
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