Words without Meaning by Christopher Gauker

Author:Christopher Gauker [Gauker, Christopher]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Published: 2011-02-17T23:59:52+00:00

160

Chapter 7

calls for a different response than the context:

{This is on the left. That is on the right. That is clean.}

Acting in accordance with the former will call for picking up and hanging the item lying on the left, while acting in accordance with the latter will call for picking up and hanging the item lying on the right. (I have already acknowledged that the term “demonstrative pronoun” is misleading in suggesting that every use of a demonstrative pronoun must be accompanied by an act of demonstration, which is not my intention.)

In the languages that people actually speak, this role of demonstrative pronouns, as devices for linking sentences, is not easily noticed because there are other common means for creating such relations between sentences. Rather than saying, “This is on the left; this is clean,” we can simply say,

“The one on the left is clean.” Instead of saying, “This is a man; then is yesterday; this came then,” we can simply say,

“The man came yesterday.” (In saying this I do not propose any general analysis of definite descriptions; there would be complications I have not touched on.) Thus we create singular terms that combine the work of demonstrative pronouns with the work of predication. Even most ordinary pronouns are not pure demonstratives because they do not merely serve to link sentences in such ways, but also do some of the work of predication. For example, “He is tall”

does the work of “This is male; this is tall.” Even “this” and

“that”, which I have been treating as paradigmatic demonstrative pronouns, are not so pure because “this” indicates a thing that is relatively near to some reference point and

“that” indicates a thing that is relatively far.

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