Let us first consider a method. How do you expect me to prove narrator's
deictic center? Psychoanalysis? No.
OK, so you are putting forward a hypothesis which is, by your own admission, unprovable - and for the same reason is unfalsifiable. As such it can only be a speculation.
Of course, not. As I described, and what is a standard method of scientific proof, a hypothesis can be accepted if no contradicting facts can be brought against it, and if the hypothesis is simler than others.
I dispute that such deictic shifts exist in Hebrew, at least unless you can provide evidence of them. I accept that they exist in Russian in the case of indirect speech and similar.
I think you need to suggest how it is even reasonable to consider that a habitual action in the past is described from a deictic centre shifted even further into the past, when there is no evidence at all for such a deictic shift.The discussed fact of using future tense to describe past events is just such evidence.
I assume, you don't dispute that deictic shifts exist.
To prove b), I invoke Russian and English examples, and show that such
shifts are not alien to human mentality.
The English example, "would" for a past habit, certainly does not indicate a deictic shift into the past.
I can settle for calling that idiomatic usage, and then we can discuss whether that idiomatic usage originally arose from deictic center shifts.
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