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<font size=4>This list has become unusually quiet... perhaps our minds
are already into Thanksgiving next week. Well, some of you may be
interested in an exchange I had with a foreign student of mine a couple
of days ago. I was sitting in my office and she asked, "Can I come
in?" Then she observed that she could not use the verb GO in her
question, although I am the one that was inside my office. (Apparently a
counterpart of either verb would be OK in Korean!) I concurred, adding
that there was probably a pragmatic constraint that requires that one
adopt the addressee's "camera angle" (to borrow something from
Susumo Kuno) under such conditions. If I had been outside my office too,
next to her or behind her, she probably should have asked "Can I go
in?" and I think that "could I come in?" would have been
infelicitous. I don't think Chuck Fillmore discussed this kind of
constraint when he published his paper on COME/GO in SEMIOTICA, I think
in 1973.<br>
<br>
I have been thinking and believe that the
constraint applies in other cases too. If you are puritanistic you may
want to skip this paragraph and not come/go/get into the following
considerations with me. In sexual intercourse a man can only tell his
partner that he is coming, not going, I suppose. His partner naturally
can only invite him to come. Are there other cases where such a rigid
constraint is associated with COME, against GO--or the other way
around?<br>
<br>
How's your paper/project coming along?<br>
or How's your paper/project going (*along)?<br>
<br>
Of course, any dialectal variation in this regard?<br>
<br>
Sali.<br>
<br>
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Salikoko S.
Mufwene
</font><font color="#800080">s-mufwene@uchicago.edu<br>
</font><font color="#800000">University of
Chicago
</font><font color="#800080">773-702-8531; FAX 773-834-0924<br>
</font><font color="#800000">Department of Linguistics<br>
1010 East 59th Street<br>
Chicago, IL 60637<br>
</font><font color="#000000"><a href="http://humanities.uchicago.edu/humanities/linguistics/faculty/mufwene.html" eudora="autourl">http://humanities.uchicago.edu/humanities/linguistics/faculty/mufwene.html</a><br>
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