Person Deixis
Person deixis concerns itself with the grammatical persons involved in an utterance, (1) those directly involved (e.g. the speaker, the addressee), (2) those not directly involved (e.g. overhearers—those who hear the utterance but who are not being directly addressed), and (3) those mentioned in the utterance. In English, the distinctions are generally indicated by pronouns. The following examples show how. (The person deictic terms are in italics, a signaling notation that will continue through this article.)
- I am going to the movies.
- Would you like to have dinner?
- They tried to hurt me, but he came to the rescue.
In many languages, the third-person masculine pronoun is often used as a default when using "it" is inappropriate, but the gender of its antecedent is unknown or inapplicable.
For example:
- To each his own.
Also common is the use of the third-person plural, even when a singular pronoun is called for:
- To each their own.
In some languages which distinguish between masculine and feminine plural pronouns, such as French or Serbo-Croatian, the masculine is again used as default. "Ils vont à la bibliothèque", "Oni idu u biblioteku" (They go to the library) may refer either to a group of males or a group which comprises both genders. "Elles vont...", "One idu..." would only be used for a group of females. In Cherokee, however, the opposite is true. The feminine pronoun is used when the sex is unknown or if it is a man within a group of women.
Place Deixis
Place deixis, also known as space deixis, concerns itself with the spatial locations relevant to an utterance. Similarly to person deixis, the locations may be either those of the speaker and addressee or those of persons or objects being referred to. The most salient English examples are the adverbs “here” and “there” and the demonstratives “this” and “that” - although those are far from being the only deictic words.
Some examples:
- I enjoy living in this city.
- Here is where we will place the statue.
- She was sitting over there.
Unless otherwise specified, place deictic terms are generally understood to be relative to the location of the speaker, as in
- The shop is across the street.
where “across the street” is understood to mean “across the street from where I am right now.” It is interesting to note that while “here” and “there” are often used to refer to locations near to and far from the speaker, respectively, “there” can also refer to the location of the addressee, if they are not in the same location as the speaker. So, while
- Here is a good spot; it is too sunny over there.
exemplifies the former usage,
- How is the weather there?
is an example of the latter.
Languages usually show at least a two-way referential distinction in their deictic system: proximal, i.e. near or closer to the speaker; and distal, i.e. far from the speaker and/or closer to the addressee. English exemplifies this with such pairs as this and that, here and there, etc.
In other languages, the distinction is three-way: proximal, i.e. near the speaker; medial, i.e. near the addressee; and distal, i.e. far from both. This is the case in a few Romance languages and in Serbo-Croatian, Korean, Japanese, Thai, Filipino and Turkish. The archaic English forms yon and yonder (still preserved in some regional dialects) once represented a distal category which has now been subsumed by the formerly medial "there".
Time Deixis
Time, or temporal, deixis concerns itself with the various times involved in and referred to in an utterance. This includes time adverbs like "now", "then", "soon", and so forth, and also different tenses. A good example is the word tomorrow, which denotes the consecutive next day after every day. The "tomorrow" of a day last year was a different day from the "tomorrow" of a day next week. Time adverbs can be relative to the time when an utterance is made (what Fillmore calls the "encoding time", or ET) or when the utterance is heard (Fillmore’s "decoding time", or DT). While these are frequently the same time, they can differ, as in the case of prerecorded broadcasts or correspondence. For example, if one were to write
- It is raining now, but I hope when you read this it will be sunny.
the ET and DT would be different, with the former deictic term concerning ET and the latter the DT.
Tenses are generally separated into absolute (deictic) and relative tenses. So, for example, simple English past tense is absolute, such as in
- He went.
while the pluperfect is relative to some other deictically specified time, as in ( He had Gone)
Discourse Deixis
Discourse deixis, also referred to as text deixis, refers to the use of expressions within an utterance to refer to parts of the discourse that contains the utterance — including the utterance itself. For example, in
This is a great story.
“this” refers to an upcoming portion of the discourse, and in
That was an amazing day.
“that” refers to a prior portion of the discourse.
Distinction must be made between discourse deixis and anaphora, which is when an expression makes reference to the same referent as a prior term, as in
- Matthew is an incredible athlete; he came in first in the race.
Lyons points out that it is possible for an expression to be both deictic and anaphoric at the same time. In his example
- I was born in London and I have lived here/there all my life.
“here” or “there” function anaphorically in their reference to London, and deictically in that the choice between “here” or “there” indicates whether the speaker is or is not currently in London.
The rule of thumb to distinguish the two phenomena is as follows: when an expression refers to another linguistic expression or a piece of discourse, it is discourse deictic. When that expression refers to the same item as a prior linguistic expression, it is anaphoric.
Switch reference is a type of discourse deixis, and a grammatical feature found in some languages, which indicates whether the argument of one clause is the same as the argument of the previous clause. In some languages, this is done through same subject markers and different subject markers. In the translated example "John punched Tom, and left-[same subject marker]," it is John who left, and in "John punched Tom, and left-[different subject marker]," it is Tom who left.[citation needed]
Social Deixis
Social deixis concerns the social information that is encoded within various expressions, such as relative social status and familiarity. Two major forms of it are the so-called T-V distinctions and honorifics.
soure : wikipedia
T-V distinction
Main article: T-V distinction
T-V distinctions, named for the Latin “tu” and “vos” (singular and plural versions of “you”) are the name given to the phenomenon when a language has two different second-person pronouns. The varying usage of these pronouns indicates something about formality, familiarity, and/or solidarity between the interactants. So, for example, the T form might be used when speaking to a friend or social equal, whereas the V form would be used speaking to a stranger or social superior. This phenomenon is common in European languages.Honorifics
Main article: Honorifics (linguistics)
Honorifics are a much more complex form of social deixis than T-V distinctions, though they encode similar types of social information. They can involve words being marked with various morphemes as well as nearly entirely different lexicons being used based on the social status of the interactants. This type of social deixis is found in a variety of languages, but is especially common in South and East Asia.soure : wikipedia