Metalinguistic Autoreference
Benoît de Cornulier
Centre Universitaire de Marseille Luminy
What1 could the source be
for that self-determined sentence: “This is
true”?2
1Fieldwork was supported
by grants from the Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies and the
Central Research Fund of the University of London. Analysis and
cogitation were partly supported by grant CS-1957 to Tokyo
University and the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique through
grant 412H. I am grateful to Alain Barthelemy, Ted Lightner, and Maurice
Gross, who discussed an earlier version of this work
(Marseille-Luminy 1968, mimeo.). For the definitive version I am
especially indebted to C.A. Debru, César Florès, H. Morel
and J. Gabszevich who helped me in many ways as I developed the problem
presented here, and to Jacques Lacan and Alcofribas J. Greimas, who put
their native intuitions about Aztecan at my disposal and enabled me to
see many points which I would otherwise have missed. This paper
incorporates the insights and suggestions of many other colleagues,
especially Richard Kayne, Jean Stefanini, Georges Mounin,
Gilles-Gaston Granger, Sri Kindanapura, Mohammed Mebkout, and
Wladimir Troubetzkoy. John R. Ross is responsible for many stylistic
improvements. All errors are of course my own.
2English was not the primary, or even secondary, focus of my fieldwork. However, whenever no informant for a language in which I was most interested was available, I would fill the time by working with any aborigine that I could find. In this way I worked a full day with Deb Gunnawara and her sister Nellie (at Palm Beach, 8 April 1969).
Reprinted with permission of the author and the editor from Linguistic Inquiry 3:2, p. 249 (Spring 1972).