DEIXISN A F I S A H N U R Z A K I YA H ( 0 2 0 3 5 1 4 0 4 1 )

U M I A I S YA H S U L I S T YA N I N G T YA S ( 0 2 0 3 5 1 4 0 4 2 )

S R Y R AT N A D E W I ( 0 2 0 3 5 1 4 0 4 3 )

O S C A R Y U S T I N O C A R A S C A L A O ( 0 2 0 3 5 1 4 0 5 8 )

The Deixis term is borrowed from the Greek word forpointing or indicating and has as prototypical or focalexemplars the use of demonstratives, person pronouns,tense, specific time and place adverbs, and a variety ofgrammatical features tied directly to the circumstances ofutterance.

Deixis also concerns ways in which the interpretation

of utterances depend on the analysis of that context of utterance.

Deixis concernsContext of utterance

OrSpeech event

The facts of deixis should act as a constant reminder to theoretical linguists of the simple but

immensely important fact that natural languages are primarily designed, so to speak, for use in

face-to-face interaction, and thus there are limits to the extent to which they can be analyzed

without taking this into account (Lyons, 1977a: 589ff).

The importance of deictic information for the interpretation of utterances is perhaps best

illustrated by what happens when such information is lacking (Fillmore, 1975: 381).

Example I'll be back in an hour

In this utterance we cannot now when the speaker will be back because we do not know when it was written.

Listen, I'm not disagreeing with you but with you, and not about this but about this

Or, suppose we find a bottle in the sea, and inside it a message which reads;

Meet me here a week from now with a stick about this big

Does “deixis” belong to Semantics or Pragmatics??????

Deixis belongs within the domain of pragmatics, because it directly

concerns the relationship between the structure of languages and

the contexts in which they are used.

The Important Point

The important point, wherever the pragmatics/semantics boundary

is drawn, is that deixis concerns the encoding of many different

aspects of the circumstances surrounding the utterance, within the

utterance itself. Natural language utterances are thus 'anchored‘

directly to aspects of the context.

Philosophical approachesThe topic of deixis, or as philosophers usually prefer, indexical expressions (or just indexicals),

may be usefully approached by considering how truth-conditional semantics deals with certain

natural language expressions. Suppose we identify the semantic content of a sentence with its

truth conditions, then the semantic content of

◦ Letizia de Ramolino was the mother of Napoleon

Then suppose we try to analyze:

◦ I am the mother of Napoleon

See these following example You are the mother of Napoleon

This is an eighteenth-century man-trap

Mary is in love with that fellow over there

It is now 12.15

Sentences that contain such expressions and whose truth

values therefore depend on certain facts about the context of utterance

(identity of speakers, addressees, indicated objects, places and times,

etc.), are not of course in any way special or peculiar. For just about

every utterance has this context-dependency, due in no small part (at

least in many languages) to tense. For example:

There is a man on Mars

There was a man on Mars

Questions of Philosophical Interest1. Whether all indexical expressions can be reduced to a single primary one?

2. Whether this final pragmatic residue can be translated out into some eternal context-free

artificial language?

According to Rusell the reduction in the first question was possible, by translating all indexicals (or as he preferred, egocentric particulars) into expressions containing this, where the latterreferred to a subjective experience. The pronoun I would thus be rendered 'the person who isexperiencing this' (for severe difficulties with such a view, see Gale, 1968). Moreover, accordingto Reichnbach, in relation with the second question, all indexicals involve an element of token-reflexivity, i.e. refer to themselves, so that, for example, I means 'the person who is uttering thistoken of the word I'. This view may be initially attractive, but it has many difficulties (Gale,1968).

ExamplesThere are indeed token-reflexive or self-referring expression is natural languages as the following:

This sentence contains five words

I hereby apologize

The syntax and semantics of classical logics (say, first order predicate calculus) make no such provision. How should indexicals be accommodated, so that the notion of logical consequence, as it applies for example to the inference as follows:

John Henry McTavitty is six feet tall and weighs zoo potrnds

John Henry McTavitty is six feet tall

I am six feet tall and weigh 2oo pounds

I am six feet tall

One way in which we can accommodate context-relativity is to say that

the proposition expressed by a sentence in a context is a function from

possible worlds and that context to truth values. A context will here

be a set of pragmatic indices, co-ordinates or reference points

(as they are variously called) for speakers, addressees, times of

utterance, places of utterance, indicated objects, and whatever else is

Needed.

The man drinking champagne is Lord Godolphin

The man who can lift this stone is stronger than an ox

The first would most naturally have a referential use, where the description might in fact bewrong (e.g. the man is actually drinking lemonade) but the reference succeed in any case; thesecond would most naturally have an attributive use where the speaker would not have anyparticular individual in mind (we could paraphrase the second utterance ‘whoever can lift thisstone is stronger than an ox '). But in many cases an utterance is potentially ambiguous betweenthese two usages. It is the speaker's intention and the addressee's successful location of theintended referent that matter in the first usage, not the exactaptness of the description, so thatwe could call this usage speaker reference (as opposed to semantic reference; Donnellan,1978;Kaplan, l978).

Descriptive Approach • Involve a series of categories of descriptive nature of deixis.

• The proponents: Buhler , Frei, Fillmore, and Lyons (summarized and systematized in the last two proponents’ works).

• Traditional categories: person, place, time deixis.

• Add: discourse (text) deixis and social deixis.

Person Deixis

• The role of participants

• First person, second person, third person

Place Deixis

• Spatial locations relative to the location

• Proximal, distal

Time Deixis

• Temporal points and spans relative to the time

• Coding time (CT)

Discourse Deixis

• The text referring expression

• That, this

Social Deixis

• Relative social distinction to participant-roles

• Social relationship between speaker and addressee (s)

• Honorifics

Deictic center

Central person

(speaker)

Central time

(time when speaker speak)

Central place (speaker’s location)

Discourse center (point of speaker is currently at)

Social center (speaker’s

social status and rank)

Different usage of deictic terms

Deictic usage

Gestural

can only be interpreted with the reference to an audio-visual-tactile, and in general a physical, monitoring of the speech event

Symbolic

Require for interpretation only knowledge of the basic spatio-temporal parameters of the speech event

Non-deictic usage

Non-anaphoric

The use of word to introduce someone or something that is more fully identified later

Anaphoric

The word, typically a pronoun, used to maintain reference to someone or something already mentioned

Person Deixis We have to consider about possible participant roles, so that we can then see how, and to what extent, these roles are grammaticalized in different languages. The framework:

The speaker or spokesman can be distinct from the source of an utterance

The recipient distinct from the target

The hearers or bystanders distinct from addressees or targets

The basic grammatical distinctions are then categorized into first, second, and third person.

Time deixis

Time deixis makes ultimate reference to participant-role, so it is important todistinguish the moment of utterance or coding time (CT) from the moment ofreception or receiving time (RT). (Levinson, 1983:73).

The deictic time adverbs in English refers to words and phrases like now,then, today, yesterday, tomorrow, next week, last year, in three days, etc. Nowis a proximal term, as it indicates the time at which the speaker is producingthe utterance, as in (53), Then is a distal expression which applies to both pastand future time relative to the time of speaking, as in (55) .

(53) Pull the trigger now!

(54) I’m now working on a PhD

(55) I was just a kid then

Fillmore (1975) notes, these have two kinds of referent: they can either referto the entire span itself, as in (56), or to a point within the relevant span, as in(57):

(56) Tomorrow is Wednesday

The deictic words yesterday,today, and tomorrow pre-emptive the calendrical. Thus the following said onThursday, can only be referring to next Thrusday, otherwise the speaker should have said today:

(58) I’ll see you on Thursday

The same holds if it is said on Wednesday, due to pre-emptive tomorrow.

In the application of next to calendrical names of days, an ambiguity arises: next Thursday can refer either to the Thirsday of the week that succeeds the week that includes CT, or that Thursday that first follows CT.

Example: A Friday or a Saturday, these will coincide; and given the rule that today and tomorrow pre-empt calendrical day names, on Wednesday and Thursday, next thursday can only mean the thursday of next week.

Time deixis is relevant to various other deictic elements in a language. Thus greetings are usually time-restricted, so that

(64) Good morning

Can only be used in the morning.

(65) Good night

Can only be used as a parting

Place deixis Place deixis: specifies the locations relative to the speech event. Here and there are two pure place

deictic words in contemporary English and the demonstrative pronouns this and that. The conceptof distance is implied in them as well as in other words which have spatial deictic sense.

1. place deixis refers to proximity to or distance from the speaker.

These can be single words such as here, there , this , that

Example : Bring that here and Take this there

The words This and here (called proximal terms) are used when something is close to the speaker; thatand there (called distal terms) are used when something is away from the speaker.

2. … and words/expressions referring to direction and/or movement toward or away from the speaker.Such as to my left, under the carpet, go, take, bring.

Example: When I’m in the office, you can come to see me.

Where come glosses as ‘movement towards the location of the speaker at the time of some other specificevent

The non-deictic conceptual organization of space includes:

All those distinctions between surfaces, spaces, enclosures, containers and so on, and between fronts, backs tops, sides of objects. For example:

(77) This side of the box

Can mean ‘the surface of the box that can be called a side which is nearest to the location of the speaker, but:

(78) This side of the tree

Simply means ‘that area of the tree visible from the point where the speaker (or the space between that area and that point).

(79) The cat behind the car

Where behind can have either a deictic usage (i.e. The car intervenes between the cat and speaker’s location), or a non deictic usage (i.e. The cat is at the intrinsic rear-end of the car).

(80) Bob is the man to the left of mark

Where Bob may be to Mark’s own left (non-deictic), or to the left from the speaker’s point of view (deictic).

4. DISCOURSE DEIXISCONCERNS THE USE OF EXPRESSIONS WITHIN SOME UTTERANCE TO REFER TO SOME PORTION OF THE DISCOURSE THAT CONTAINS THAT UTTERANCE (INCLUDING THE UTTERANCE ITSELF.

(LEVINSON, 1983: 85)

Time discourse-deicticIt seems natural that time-deictic words can be used to refer to portions of the discourse:

Examples:

Last week

Next Thursday

Last paragraph

In the next Chapter

Demonstrative “This” and “That”“This” can be used to refers to a forthcoming portion of the discourse.

i.g : I bet you haven’t heard this story

“That” to a preceding portion

i.g : That was the funniest story I’ve never heard

Place discourse-deictic

5. SOCIAL DEIXISSocial Deixis concerns the encoding of social distinctions that are relative to participant-roles, particularly aspects of the social relationship holding between speaker and addressee(s) or speaker and some referent. (Levinson, 1983: 63)

There are two basic kinds of socially deictic information:

RELATIONAL

ABSOLUTE

RELATIONAL; The relations that typically expressed:Speaker and referent (e.g. referent honorifics)

Speaker and addressee (e.g. addressee honorifics)

Speaker and bystander (e.g. bystander or audience honorifics)

Speaker and setting (e.g. formality levels)

ABSOLUTE socially deictic information:Authorized speaker:

Thai:

- ‘khrab’ a polite participle that can only be used by male speakers.

- ‘kha’ a polite participle that can only be used by female speakers

Authorized recipient:

Title Address: Your Honour, Mr. President

Thank you….