Re: Emphasis

["William H. Martin" <whm2m@server1.mail.virginia.edu>]

I appreciate the attempt to clarify, but I don't think your 
interpretation of my intent matches mine. Your example comes 
closer to fitting my intent than your description does.

Let's try again:

I go to contra dances. At the end, the caller points to the 
guitarist (emphasizing) and says, "Larry Ungar on guitar" and 
everybody claps. Larry plays a little louder and does 
something fancy on guitar. His performance is EMPHASIZED. Then 
the caller says, "Ginny Snow on bass" and everyone claps. 
Larry gets quieter and Ginny gets louder and plays something 
fancy on the bass. They can still see and hear Larry. He's still 
there. It's just Ginny's turn to be emphasized. That's what the 
suffix {-'e'} does. It is also what an explicit pronoun does if 
it is not being used to simply clarify (especially third person 
to clarify number or ability to use language).

Now, if everyone left the stage except Larry, and he played a 
guitar solo, I would not consider it to be a matter of Larry 
being emphasized. He is the only musician you can see or hear. 
It is not a case of emphasis. It is exclusion. He is all there 
is. Larry is not emphasized and Ginny deemphasized. Ginny isn't 
there. It's just Larry on the stage. That's what {neH} does.

Does this make sense yet? Does anyone understand me?

charghwI' 'utlh

On Wed, 10 Feb 1999 14:00:37 -0800 (PST) Marc Ruehlaender 
<ruehli@iastate.edu> wrote:

> ja' charghwI':
> > Can some third party help us out here? I'm not trying to bully 
> > anyone. I'd just like to have someone explain something to one 
> > of us so that person could better understand the other one's 
> > point. If I'm the one who needs adjusting, so be it. Surely 
> > someone else has a useful insight on this.
> > 
> I'll have a stab at it.
> Obviously, you disagree in your interpretation of emphasis.
> 
> Steven uses for both {neH} and {-'e'} something like
> "focus attention", which makes sense, but William's point
> is that one can "focus attention" indifferent ways.
> 
> Let's say you are looking at a picture on a screen.
> Now, the operator wants to "focus your attention" on
> a certain part of it. She could either add a frame
> around the interesting part of the picture or zoom in on it.
> 
> The first option would correspond to using {-'e'},
> the second option to using {neH}. (roughly!!!)
> 
> Does this help?
> 
>                                            Marc Ruehlaender
>                                            aka HomDoq
>                                            ruehli@iastate.edu