Deixis, Buhler and the Problem of Ambiguity (4)

[Salinas17 at aol.com]

In a message dated 5/18/09 3:03:43 PM, twood at uwc.ac.za writes:
> Your mistake IMHO lies in
> thinking that for reference to occur it must involve a concrete, unitary
> object. Not so. One can refer to an utterance, a memory, a thought, a
> text, a dream.
> 
Tahir - Not my mistake.   The use of "secondary deixis" as pertaining to 
abstractions rather than concrete object that can be literally be pointed to 
appears to be somewhat common.   I cited a paper on diachronic changes that 
used the term, and I believe that Grenoble uses it in this way in her paper 
on Deixis in Russian.

My point is that whether a reference is to "an utterance, a memory, a 
thought, a text, a dream" it will always carry some degree of ambiguity when it 
is shared in language.   And the more abstract the reference ("liberty", 
"knowledge", "thinking") the more likely the ambiguity.

regards,
steve long










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