Re: [tied] Morphology 19 update - Ego

On Wed, 04 Dec 2002 18:54:48 -0000, "Richard Wordingham"
<richard.wordingham@...> wrote:

>--- In cybalist@..., Miguel Carrasquer <mcv@...> wrote:
>> I suppose you're referring to (to use Moliner's example): "Teníamos
>> un coche y una moto: ésta estropeada y aquél sin gasolina" [We had a
>> car and a motorcycle: this one (the motorcycle, the latter) broken,
>> and that one (the car, the former) without gas".
>
>Interesting. I'd read it was the other way round in Spanish.
>Traditional prescriptive grammars claim English has 'this' = 'latter'
>(probably on the basis of Latin), but I think English has long been
>confused. Certainly the examples did not sound right.

To me it all sounds like a bookish thing. It's all about what's
closest in the written line. When speaking, I don't think like that.

>And if *e could do duty for many prepositional phrases, e.g. 'by means
>of this', it might reinforce a gesture to oneself, perhaps to an
>appropriate organ (eye, belly, heart?, hand), and so *e-g^ might be
>interpreted as an emphatic first person pronoun.
>
>I think there may be a small semantic problem with the scenario. Was
>*e part of a 3-way deixis, or independent as Latin is, ea, id was of
>hic ~ iste ~ ille? We assume *e means 'then' when it is used as the
>temporal augment.

In Latin is is anaphoric... In Latin, <is> is anaphoric, as is <ibi>:
the thing/place just mentioned (whether close to me, to you or to
neither). I think that's what it is, at least. But what it was like
in pre-PIE is anybody's guess. If eg(o) contains *e, that certainly
would make a case for original Ich-deixis, but one has to beware of
circularity.

>> >In fact, in English 'here' is used to attract attention for
>> peremptory
>> >commands or questions, e.g. 'Here, you pick up that rubbish!'.
>>
>> English 'here' in this use is very similar to the Dutch usage of
>> 'hoor' with commands, which makes we wonder if what we have is
>'here'
>> or 'hear'.
>
>'Hear' doesn't seem right. But it could be a blend of many things. I
>think "listen here" corresponds more literally with the Dutch, and
>"here" could be aphetic of "listen here" (or rather, "listen 'ere").
>Another source of influence is 'Here, boy' when you call a dog. That
>might just be 'Hear, boy', but I don't think so.

No, that's "[come] here" (Du. "hier jij!"). I was thinking more of
"You pick up that rubbish, you hear?", which is not unlike "Here, you
pick up that rubbish!".

Dutch "hoor" is actually quite untranslatable. Van Dale's Hedendaags
Nederlands describes the semantics as: "ter bevestiging, verzekering,
ontkenning, toe-, in-stemming, bewondering, verwerping, aanmaning enz.
tussen of na een uitspraak of mededeling" (to express confirmation,
assurance, denial, permission, approval, admiration, rejection, urge
etc. in the middle of or after a statement or announcement)"

=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv@...