Confusing Textual Reference With Interpersonal Deixis

Martin (1992: 134):

There may be good experiential reasons for doing this.  Pre-Numeratives for example make mass nouns countable (e.g. three boxes of jam) and count nouns "massable" (e.g. a flock of geese).  And having split participants in two, independent deixis selections may be taken up in each nominal group: some boxes of that jam I like, a flock of those geese we saw.  Where deixis is made explicit in both nominal groups, they are best taken as realising two participants and coded twice for phoricity; where deixis is not coded in the second group and the group is presumed as a single participant, this is hardly necessary (e.g. a strong cup of tea, this kind of beer, etc.).

Blogger Comments:

[1] Trivially, extended Numeratives do not make count nouns "massable".  In a flock of geese, both nouns are count nouns.

[2] As previously explained, in such nominal groups, it is not that a participant is split in two, but that two different nouns serve as experiential Thing and logical Head.

[3] To be clear, it is the determiner that serves as interpersonal Deictic that potentially also serves as a textual reference item.  As previously explained, the notion of a nominal group realising two participants, each "coded for phoricity" arises from confusing non-structural textual reference with structural interpersonal deixis of the nominal group.