Deixis, Buhler and the Problem of Ambiguity

[Salinas17 at aol.com]

In a message dated 5/18/09 3:17:34 AM, twood at uwc.ac.za writes:
--I agree with the broad notion of deixis; I have never thought of it as a 
small class of linguistic expressions. But I don't agree that it has much to 
do with ambiguity. It seems to me that deixis is more like the pole of 
concrete as opposed to abstract in language, or specific as opposed to 
universal. So a linguistic expression will tend to have a deictic content as well as 
an ideational content--

Tahir - Thanks for the comment.   Let me suggest that ambiguity arises in 
two ways with deixis.   One is the simple problem created by external 
context.   Levinson describes these on all levels, but the most apparent are the 
most basic -- "from the infant’s point of view, deixis is as confusing as a 
hall of mirrors: my “I” is your “you”, my “this” is your “that”, my “here”
, your “there”, and so forth."

Ambiguity is also involved with deixis when we use it to be definite, i.e., 
to minimize ambiguity -- I don't want any car but this car.   The irony 
here is that what decreases ambiguity also increases ambiguity, since we are 
not in Kansas anymore when we accept deictic reference into our study of 
expression.

The problem I cited with deixis applying to abstracts is that we really 
have no way of stopping the ball at just concretes.   For example:
John knew that.
That was exactly what I was thinking.
Do you believe this?
Here is where we part thinking.
That is diectic and this is not.
Here, on the other hand, a squared times b squared equals d.

So-called secondary deixis apparently can apply to extreme abstracts -- 
which is why perhaps Buhler limited deixis to the point before the "pointing" 
became representation or symbolic.   Perhaps because the process changes 
after that, if we are pointing to an abstract.

regards and thanks,
steve long













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