Deixis, Buhler and the Problem of Ambiguity

[Daniel Everett]

And of course Mike Tomasello (whom Hrdy acknowledges) has been talking  
about this stuff for years, looking at cross-species data among  
different primates.

Dan



On 18 May 2009, at 12:39, Tom Givon wrote:

>
> I think that before we accept as gospel the idea that "from the  
> infant's point of view, deixis is as confusing as a hall of  
> mirrors", we ought perhaps look a bit more carefully at how infants  
> actually acquire communicative expression of reference, starting  
> from deixis and going on to other kinds of reference. The CHILDES  
> transcript of communication in the first year of life shows that the  
> prerequisite to reference is the care-giver's intense exercise in  
> establishing JOINT ATTENTION. The reason why this will become first  
> deictic reference is obvious--in early childhood, all communication  
> is about here-and-now, you-and-I, this-and-that accessible to both  
> of us in the shared speech situation. There is nothing confusing to  
> the infant in these learning sessions. On the contrary, the process  
> capitalizes on the shared perceptual field and the child's innate  
> propensity to attend to salient objects--colorful, compactly-shaped,  
> fast-moving, or pointed to by the care-giver. But the child is also  
> acquiring another important prerequisite to reference--and  
> communication in general--during the first year of life: Considering  
> OTHER MINDS as having a perspective distinct from one's own (inter- 
> subjectivity; theory of mind). So the acquisition of referential  
> communication is deeply embedded in these early capacities. Joint- 
> attention sessions are indeed early theory-of-mind instructional  
> sessions.
>
> Attracting the child attention to a referent within the shared  
> situation in early childhood is done by various pointing means-- 
> touching, approaching, holding-bringing-and-showing, changing the  
> child's position, pointing, and eventually verbal deictic  
> expressions. Verbs of perception such as "see", "look", "ear" or  
> "touch" are prominently used in the care-giver's verbal "obligato"  
> that accompanies these joint-attention (or joint-reference)  
> sessions. Early nominal vocabulary is also prominently introduced at  
> these sessions. And early uses of determiners ('this', 'the',  
> 'your', 'my') that are not motivated by discourse but still by the  
> deictic situation.
>
> With the gradual change during the second year to communication  
> about non-present objects and future and past events, the move from  
> deictic to other types of reference is phased in, together with more  
> sophisticated grammatical devices that point at remembered or  
> imagined referents. Thus, while the domain of reference expands, the  
> basic principle established in early infancy--JOINT-ATTENTION-- 
> remains as the leitmotif of all referential gestures, verbal &  
> otherwise: Make sure that you & I are attending to the same thing.  
> This is, of course, deeply embedded in the human capacity to  
> consider other minds ("inter-subjectivity, Theory of Mind, empathy).  
> There is a beautiful recent book by Sarah Hrdy on the evolution of  
> this capacity ("Mother & Others") that I think is perhaps worth  
> reviewing here, maybe later. (And Ch. 8 "How children acquire  
> complex reference" of my recent "The Genesis of Syntactic  
> Complexity" deals in some detail with the child reference data  
> during years 2-3-4).
>
> Cheers, TG
>
> ==============
>
>
> In more sophisticated referential learning during the 2nd and 3rd  
> year,
>
> Salinas17 at aol.com wrote:
>> 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  early stages ("see the kitty?").
>> 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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