Deixis, Buhler and the Problem of Ambiguity (3)

[Salinas17 at aol.com]

In a message dated 5/18/09 12:54:28 PM, dlevere at ilstu.edu writes:
-- 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 - Christine Kenneally, in her book "The First Word" tells of how 
Tomasello was "brought over" to the belief that chimps do point by a video 
presentation by David Leavens, where a chimp consistently points and Leavens 
consistently retrieves.   Afterwards, Leavens said "I submit there is a 
well-trained primate in this video, but it is not the chimpanzee."

Tomasello thinks that chimps rarely point in the wild because they are not 
as cooperative a species as humans.   However, I do not know of any research 
that proves that humans point in the wild, either -- if by "in the wild" we 
mean not contact with human culture.

Leavens, Hopkins and Bard published a wonderful paper in 2005 called 
"Understanding the Point of Chimpanzee Pointing" where they quote the title of an 
article by George Butterworth , "Pointing is the Royal Road to Language for 
Babies."

On the other hand, Stephen Levinson barely mentions "ostensive definition" 
in his article in the Handbook of Pragmatics and he denies chimps can really 
point or understand a pointing gesture, citing Kita and Povinelli.

But once again Levinson treats deixis not as a basis of language, but 
rather as a special class of expressions.   That is why he argues that deixis 
appears late in development in part of the article which reads as follows (and 
includes the line about hall of mirrors that Tom objected to):

"Linguists have argued similarly, that deixis is the source of reference, 
i.e. deictic reference is ontogenetically primary to other kinds (Lyons 
1975). But the actual facts concerning the acquisition of deictic expressions 
paint a different picture, for the acquisition of many aspects of deixis is 
quite delayed (Tanz 1980, Wales 1986), and even though demonstratives figure 
early, they are often not used correctly (see Clark 1978). This is hardly 
surprising because, 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 . The demonstratives aren’t used correctly 
in English till well after the pronouns “I” and “You”, or indeed till 
after deictic “in front of”/ “in back of”, that is not till about 4 (Tanz 
1980:145)."

Again, Levinson is defining deixis narrowly, but that it is fairly common 
in the literature.

regards,
steve long
































**************
A Good Credit Score is 700 or Above. See Yours in Just 2 Easy 
Steps! 
(http://pr.atwola.com/promoclk/100126575x1221322941x1201367178/aol?redir=http://www.freecreditreport.com/pm/default.aspx?sc=668072&hmpgID=115&
bcd=Mayfooter51809NO115)