tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Mon Jul 03 17:34:39 2000
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RE: Deixis and direction
ja'pu' SuStel:
> Doesn't the pouring happen in the room where I'm standing while pouring?
ja' charghwI':
>Much as it happens in the city where the room was built and the planet where
>the city exists and the star system where the planet spins... You can always
>zoom out, but the point I'm making is that the pouring happens in the cup. I
>don't think it is really possible to argue that the action of the pouring
>DOESN'T happen in the cup.
*I* will argue exactly that. Viewed in an extremely narrow scope, pouring
happens in the space between containers. Seen through a larger scope,
pouring happens in the location where the pitcher and pourer and cup all
happen to be. In medium scope, I think the most natural view is that the
pouring happens wherever the subject of the sentence is. The cup is not
the defining feature of the location.
> It does happen in a larger context as well, but
>there is no locative context which excludes the cup in which one could
>validly argue the pouring occurs. The location of the pouring always
>includes the cup. Pouring without the cup in this case is merely spilling or
>leaking.
I can easily imagine pouring a gallon of milk out a second-story window
into a dishpan waiting on the ground, satisfying the semantic requirements
of the Klingon verb {qang}. I feel justified in claiming that in this case
the location of the pouring is where *I* am, not where the dishpan is.
I see that SuStel gave a similar example, and that he has answered the rest
of the argument in much the same way I would have, so I'll stop here.
-- ghunchu'wI' 'utlh