Deictic motion in viewpoint construction: The case of The Hobbit in English and Estonian
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| Year of publication | 2025 |
| Type | Appeared in Conference without Proceedings |
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| Description | The presentation outlines an analysis of the deictic motion verb 'come' as a viewpoint marker in the main narrative space of The Hobbit. The proposed analysis distinguishes between the use of 'come' together with an implicit ('Then suddenly goblins came running up yelling') or explicit ('Then they came to lands where people spoke strangely') goal. In the former case the viewpoint is that of the character at the goal location (implied by the previous context), in the latter case the viewpoint is rather that of a distant narrator. To examine the cross-linguistic validity of our analysis, we compare our analysis of the English text with its Estonian rendition. We find that when 'come' is used with an explicit goal, the translator prefers the non-deictic motion verb 'joudma', thus interpreting the viewpoint in accordance with the above analysis. |