DEICTIC EXPRESSIONS

PERSON DEIXIS

Person deixis is deictic reference to the participant role of a referent, such as the speaker, the addressee, and referents which are neither speaker nor addressee.

Person deixis is commonly expressed by the following kinds of constituents: Pronouns, Possessive affixes of nouns and Agreement affixes of verbs.

- First person deixis is deictic reference that refers to the speaker, or both the speaker and referents grouped with the speaker.

The following singular pronouns: I, me, myself, my, mine

The following plural pronouns: we, us, ourselves, our, ours

Am, the first person form of the verb be

+ Exclusive first person deixis is deixis that refers to a group not including the addressee(s)

+ Inclusive first person deixis is deixis that refers to a group including the addressee(s).

- Second person deixis is deictic reference to a person or persons identified as addressee.

You, yourself, yourselves, your, yours

- Third person deixis is deictic reference to a referent(s) not identified as the speaker or addressee.

He, she, they, the third person singular verb suffix -s (He sometimes flies.)

+ Obviative person deixis is third person deixis that distinguishes a less important referent in the present stage of the discourse from a referent that is more important.

+ Proximate person deixis is a third person deixis that distinguishes a referent that is more important at the present stage of the discourse from a referent that is less important.

SOCIAL DEIXIS

Social deixis is reference to the social characteristics of, or distinctions between, the participants or referents in a speech event.

The distinction, found in many Indo-European languages, between familiar and polite second person pronouns is an expression of social deixis.

- Relational social deixis is deictic reference to a social relationship between the speaker and an addressee, bystander, or other referent in the extra linguistic context.

+ Distinctions between the French second person pronouns “tu” and “vous”

+ Speech levels of Southeast Asian languages that depend on the relative status of the speaker and addressee

+ Distinctions between lexical choices made in the presence of certain kin in Dyirbal

- Absolute social deixis is deictic reference to some social characteristic of a referent (especially a person) apart from any relative ranking of referents.

+ Often absolute social deixis is expressed in certain forms of address. The form of address will include no comparison of the ranking of the speaker and addressee; there will be only a simple reference to the absolute status of the addressee: Mr. President, Your Honor

DISCOURSE DEIXIS

Discourse deixis is deictic reference to a portion of a discourse relative to the speaker's current “location” in the discourse.

- Use of this to refer to a story one is about to tell in:

+ I bet you haven’t heard this story. (Reference to Chapter 7 of a book by means of in the next chapter or in the previous chapter, depending on whether the reference is made from Chapter 6 or 8.)

- Use of this in a creaky-voiced utterance of:

+ This is what phoneticians call a creaky voice.

Switch reference is a grammatical category with the following features:

It signals the identity or nonidentity of the referent of an argument of one clause, usually its subject, with an argument of another clause, which is likewise usually the subject.

Switch reference functions to avoid ambiguity of reference; for example, it may distinguish between two referents that are third person and that, thus, may not be otherwise distinguished on the verb.

It relates clauses, usually adjacent, that may be subordinate or coordinate to one another.

It is expressed: usually by inflectional affixes on the verb, sometimes by the same affixes that express subject-verb agreement within the clause, and rarely by a morpheme independent of the verb.

A different subject marker is a marker in the verb morphology of a clause which indicates that the subject of the clause is not the same as the subject of some other clause. The other clause is maybe

+ a following clause

+ the final clause in a clause chain, or

+ the main clause in a sentence.

A same subject marker is a distinction in the verb morphology of a clause that indicates that the subject is identical to the subject of another clause, such as one of the following:

+ A following clause

+ The final clause in a clause chain

+ The main clause in a sentence

Token-reflexive deixis is discourse deixis in which the deictic expression refers to the expression or speech act in which it occurs.

+ This is what phoneticians call "creaky voice."

+ [the utterance itself is spoken with creaky voice]

+ I hereby apologize.

PLACE DEIXIS

Place deixis is deictic reference to a location relative to the location of a participant in the speech event, typically the speaker.

this (way), that (direction), here, there

Boundedness is the presence or absence of a component of meaning indicative of a border at the location indicated in an expression of place deixis.

out there, in there

TIME DEIXIS

Time deixis is reference to time relative to a temporal reference point. Typically, this point is the moment of utterance.

Temporal adverbs

now / then, yesterday / today / tomorrow

Distinctions in tense

EMPATHETIC DEIXIS

Empathetic deixis is the metaphorical use of deictic forms to indicate emotional or other psychological “distance” or “proximity” between a speaker and a referent.

+ The use of this to indicate the speaker’s empathy+ The use of that to indicate the speaker’s emotional distance

SPATIAL DEIXIS

Spatial deixis localizes both the Speech participants and narrated participants in space.

Here, Above, Over there, Left