hwithumalut

You should probably watch this video before reading. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kd7y3SeGaFo&t=384s&ab_channel=AgmaSchwa

In this video Angma schwa talks about the linguistic (and metaphysical) concept of deixis. His main concern is not the actual educational explanation of deixis, but the speculative possibilities of deixis in non-naturalistic, or non-human conlangs. To support this he introduces the concept that deixis relates to temporal and spatial dimensions centering on a deictic “here” in natural languages, but he imagines various speculative deictic relations. He initially introduces two. One of these accesses called a d-axis relates to the relative velocity of the here, and the e-axis (standing for egocentric) shows the causal relatedness of the thing being discussed to the “here” itself. Angma schwa calls both of these higher metaphysical directions, when in actuality the d-axis is just physical, not metaphysical. This is why the e-axis is more interesting to me. The other two axes are also metaphysical, and I want to bring this to light.

Those initial spatial and temporal axes interest me as well, because they use what American philosopher Graham Harman calls categories of relationality, or tensions, time and space. These two categories are accompanied by two more for him, essence and eidos. This is talked about in his book The Quadruple Object, in which he theorizes on the metaphysics of objects.

The most important aspects to understand are that there are four parts to an object. Two of these parts are types of qualities, or traits, the real qualities and the sensual qualities.. Two of these parts are types of the object themselves, the real object, and the sensual object. Any given object you can name will have all four and the tensions between them. The real object is the least relational aspect of the object, and is the actual reality under the surface appearance of an object. An object is not just its appearance it is also its real in-itself side. Though objects do appear to one another. So the sensual object is the identity of an object to another object. For example if I were to see a hat, the real object would be submerged under the sensual object masking it. This hat would have a color upon sight, a texture upon touch, a shape, and maybe a scent upon nuzzling it. These are the sensual qualities which exist upon the object. They exist as mere appearance, though are not the identity of the object. The identity (sensual object) is more than the sum of its sensual qualities.

The more complex sort of qualities are the real ones which are hidden. A hatmaker is not always making hats, but can make hats. I may not see a car driving, but I know it can. Real qualities are qualities that are not currently in action. They are submerged, and known only by prior knowledge, or theory. The real object is also separate from its qualities, and appearances. The many qualities change, but the ship of Theseus remains. Though maybe we only know that its mast is not original because Theseus told us himself. We only know that a book has a cheap twist ending because we suspect that the writer can only write endings like that. This theoretical knowledge is a tension called eidos. Eidos is specifically the tension between the sensual object and the real qualities. The tension between identity and submerged traits. The four tensions, or categories of relationality are key to Graham Harman’s theory, essence, eidos, space and time. Time is the relation between the sensual object and the sensual qualities. See the fluttering in and out of colors and scents that you associate with your dear hat. Space is between the real object and its sensual qualities. This is how these qualities are arranged over the real object, as textures and colors meld over something deeper. Finally essence is between real quality and real object. These submerged inactive qualities are merged onto one another.

So basically what I wanted to say was that you could incorporate the tensions into linguistic deixis. It’s not naturalistic, but it can happen. Agma Schwa was ahead of me when he created the e-axis which I believe is similar to an axis of essence. This is because it corresponds to the overall relatedness, or essentiality between. In general the deictic center can represent any object with language potential. So the main idea is to track an axis, an axis of eidos, or a T-axis for theory. How I'm imagining this function most similarly to the e-axis.

Let's make a sample vocab to show off how this works.

Pa: here temporarily. Now. Pu: before Pi: after

Sa: here essentially. The essential center. The real object. Also first person pronoun. Su: unrelated essentially. Si: related essentially

Fa: here spatially. Fu: behind, below, and left Fi: in front of, above and right.

Ta: deictic center of eidos. The sensual object. Tu: unrelated theoretically. Not necessarily stemming from the identity. Ti: necessary from the identity. Theoretically related.

Kosa: run, or running. Baluka: is, are. Verb be, or being Vasu: home Dula: you

Sa kosa pa: I run now Sa kosa fa, pu kosa vasu: I run here before running home. Sa baluka fu dula: I am behind/below/left of you. Si dula kosa: you running is essentially related to me. Or you running is caused by me. HArd to translate. Tu Sa kosa: my running has something to do with my identity. : The reason this makes sense is because if you know someone is a runner, you assume they run.