Military industrial complex lays Pommy lexicographer low

[Douglas G. Wilson]

>>1996 A. Warner _Outlying Station_ in H. Ritchie _New Scottish Writing_
>>209 If I had _yonder_ in there for a daughter and the storms that are
>>brewing for her future I'd take myself up in those woods with a good
>>length of rope and a fine bottle of malt.

>In the context, is this a demonstrative, as in "If I had [that girl]
>yonder for a daughter"?  Presumably the focused "yonder" is accompanied by
>a pointing or a head-nodding to the girl in question.  Interesting transfer.

Seems like a demonstrative, all right; I'd read "yonder" as a dialectal or
unusual pronoun equivalent to "yon" = "that one [over there, at a distance
from you and me]", in this case = "her". I think this "yon" pronoun may be
more conventional in Scots?

The equivalent might be "If I had _her_ in there for a daughter ...."

When somebody asserts that English -- unlike Japanese or Spanish -- has
only two "places" ("here", "there") [if I were a linguistician I guess I'd
talk about two-fold spatial deixis or so?] I think one can respond that,
no, English has three "places" also. E.g., for demonstrative adjectives:

Jap. "kono" ~ Span. "este" ~ Eng. "this"
Jap. "sono" ~ Span. "ese" ~ Eng. "that"
Jap. "ano" ~ Span. "aquel" ~ Eng. "yon[der]"

... sort of.

-- Doug Wilson