Semantics: a coursebook, second edition
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| Deixis and definiteness
69 Feedback (1) before the utterance (2) at the time of the utterance (Perhaps before and after as well, but, strictly, Matthew isn’t saying anything about what happens before or after his utterance.) (3) after the time of my utterance (4) (a) This utterance can only truthfully be made in or after the year 1993. (b) This utterance must have been made in or before 1936. Comment Although tense is de finitely deictic, as illustrated above, the issue is complicated by the fact that there are a variety of di fferent ways of expressing past, present, and future time in English, and these di fferent methods interact with other factors such as progressive and perfective aspect. We will not delve into these details here. A generalization can be made about the behaviour of all deictic terms in reported speech. In reported speech, deictic terms occurring in the original utterance (the utterance being reported) may be translated into other, possibly non-deictic, terms in order to preserve the original reference. Example John: ‘I’ll meet you here tomorrow.’ Margaret (reporting John’s utterance some time later): ‘John said he would meet me there the next day.’ In this example, five adjustments are made in the reported speech, namely: I → he, ‘ll ( will) → would, you → me, here → there, tomorrow → the next day Practice Use an utterance of your own to report each of the following utterances from a vantage point distant in time and space, changing all the deictic terms to preserve the correct relationships with the situation of the original utterance. Assume that John was speaking to you in each case. (1) John: ‘I don’t live in this house any more’ .......................................................................................................................... (2) John: ‘I need your help right now’ .......................................................................................................................... (3) John: ‘Why wouldn’t you come to London with me yesterday?’ .......................................................................................................................... Feedback (1) ‘John said that he didn’t live in that house any more’ (2) ‘John said that he needed my help right then’ (3) ‘John asked why I wouldn’t go to London with him the day before’ Comment These changes in reported speech arise by the very nature of deictic terms. Since deictic terms take (some of) their meaning from the situation of utterance, an utterance reporting an utterance in a di fferent situation cannot always faithfully use the deictic terms of the original utterance. PA RT T WO From reference . . . 70 The function of deixis in language can be better understood by asking the question, ‘Could there be a language without deixis, i.e. without any deictic expressions?’ Let us consider this question by means of some examples. Practice Imagine a language, called Zonglish, exactly like English in all respects, except that it contains no deictic terms at all, i.e. all English deictic terms have been eliminated from Zonglish. (1) Is I would like a cup of tea a wellformed Zonglish sentence? Yes / No (2) Given that a Zonglish speaker could not say ‘I would like a cup of tea’, would it be possible for him to inform someone that he would like a cup of tea by saying, ‘The speaker would like a cup of tea’? Yes / No (3) In a language like Zonglish, with no deictic terms, could one rely on one’s hearers interpreting ‘the speaker’ when uttered as referring to the utterer? tải về 1.74 Mb. Chia sẻ với bạn bè của bạn:
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