UNIT 2 SEMANTICS AND PRAGMATICS INTERFACE | Apuntes de Lingüística

PRAGMÁTICA Y DISCURSO EN LENGUA INGLESA

syntactic properties of clauses or sentences, such as word order, contribute to (or alternatively,

are influenced by) the properties of higher-level structures of a text.

UNIT 2: SEMANTICS AND PRAGMATICS INTERFACE

2.1. Deixis

The term ‘deixis’ comes from the Greek word for pointing and refers to a particular way in

which certain linguistic expressions (‘deictics’ or ‘indexicals’) are dependent on the context in

which they are produced or interpreted. E.g., ‘I am here now’ (will express different

propositions on each occasion of use)

The phenomenon of deixis has been considerable interest to philosophers, linguists and

psychologists  natural languages (face to face interaction). As people take turns talking, the

referents of I, you, here, there, this, that, etc. systematically switch too-difficulty for children in

language acquisition. In simple terms, deixis is organized around a ‘deictic center’ (the speaker)

and his/her location in space and time at the time of speaking although the location of the

addressee is also taken into account, forming a two centered system.

There are deictic categories that are personal deixis, time deixis, spatial deixis, discourse deixis

and social deixis.

2.1.1. Personal deixis

Traditional grammatical category of person, reflected in pronouns and verb agreement, involves

the most basic deictic notions. Deixis to person is realized using personal pronouns: I (speaker),

you (addressee) and third person (-speaker, -addressee). Third person is technically non-deictic,

as it does not necessarily correspond to any participant role in the speech event. E.g.:

- ‘Always forgive your enemies (addressee); nothing annoys them (the enemies are not

part of the speech situation) so much’,

- ‘I (speaker) stopped believing in Santa Claus (third person) when my mother took me to

see him (its not inside the speech situation, so it’s not deixis) in a department store, and

he asked for my autograph’. There is no addressee.

- ‘From the moment I (speaker) picked up your (addressee) book until I (speaker) laid it

down, I (speaker) was convulsed with laughter. Someday I (speaker) intend to read it’

- ‘I (speaker) got kicked out of ballet class because I pulled a groin muscle. It wasn’t

mine (speaker).’

The great importance of person deixis in human communication is reflected across languages in

the fact that all languages appear to have first and second person pronouns. By contrast, there

are many languages and language families which lack third person pronouns. Bhatt identifies

proto-European, proto-Uto-Aztecan, etc. as two person languages. In languages of this type,

other linguistic elements such as demonstratives or definite determiners, are used when the

reference is to someone other than the speaker or addressee.

Many languages, apart from encoding distinctions of person in the pronouns, mark it also by

means of verb agreement with the pronouns in question: yo amo, tú amas, etc. when face to face

contact is lost, languages often impose a distinct mode of self-introduction. Compare the

following English utterances. ‘I’m Joe Bloggs, this is Joe Bloggs or Joe Bloggs is speaking’.

2.1.2. Time deixis

Time deixis concerns the encoding of temporal points relative to the time at which the utterance

is spoken. In English, the deictic forms or resources to express time deixis are tenses, and

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syntactic properties of clauses or sentences, such as word order, contribute to (or alternatively, are influenced by) the properties of higher-level structures of a text.

UNIT 2 : SEMANTICS AND PRAGMATICS INTERFACE

2.1. Deixis

The term ‘deixis’ comes from the Greek word for pointing and refers to a particular way in which certain linguistic expressions (‘deictics’ or ‘indexicals’) are dependent on the context in which they are produced or interpreted. E.g., ‘I am here now’ (will express different propositions on each occasion of use) The phenomenon of deixis has been considerable interest to philosophers, linguists and psychologists  natural languages (face to face interaction). As people take turns talking, the referents of I, you, here, there, this, that , etc. systematically switch too-difficulty for children in language acquisition. In simple terms, deixis is organized around a ‘deictic center’ (the speaker) and his/her location in space and time at the time of speaking although the location of the addressee is also taken into account, forming a two centered system. There are deictic categories that are personal deixis, time deixis, spatial deixis, discourse deixis and social deixis. 2.1.1. Personal deixis Traditional grammatical category of person, reflected in pronouns and verb agreement, involves the most basic deictic notions. Deixis to person is realized using personal pronouns: I (speaker), you (addressee) and third person (-speaker, - addressee). Third person is technically non-deictic, as it does not necessarily correspond to any participant role in the speech event. E.g.:

‘Always forgive your enemies (addressee); nothing annoys them (the enemies are not part of the speech situation) so much’,
‘I (speaker) stopped believing in Santa Claus (third person) when my mother took me to see him (its not inside the speech situation, so it’s not deixis) in a department store, and he asked for my autograph’. There is no addressee.
‘From the moment I (speaker) picked up your (addressee) book until I (speaker) laid it down, I (speaker) was convulsed with laughter. Someday I (speaker) intend to read it’
‘I (speaker) got kicked out of ballet class because I pulled a groin muscle. It wasn’t mine (speaker).’ The great importance of person deixis in human communication is reflected across languages in the fact that all languages appear to have first and second person pronouns. By contrast, there are many languages and language families which lack third person pronouns. Bhatt identifies proto-European, proto-Uto-Aztecan, etc. as two person languages. In languages of this type, other linguistic elements such as demonstratives or definite determiners, are used when the reference is to someone other than the speaker or addressee. Many languages, apart from encoding distinctions of person in the pronouns, mark it also by means of verb agreement with the pronouns in question: yo amo, tú amas , etc. when face to face contact is lost, languages often impose a distinct mode of self-introduction. Compare the following English utterances. ‘I’m Joe Bloggs, this is Joe Bloggs or Joe Bloggs is speaking’. 2.1.2. Time deixis Time deixis concerns the encoding of temporal points relative to the time at which the utterance is spoken. In English, the deictic forms or resources to express time deixis are tenses, and

adverbs or adverbials of time such as now, then, yesterday, tomorrow, last year, next Tuesday, three years ago, in the future, etc. these elements rely on the speaker’s location in time at the time of the utterance. Verb tenses, in principle, have as their main function to refer to a specific time:

The present tense specifies that the state or event holds during a temporal span including the utterance time
The past tense codes that the relevant time span held before the utterance time
The future time specifies that the relevant time span succeeds the utterance time, etc. The grammatical categories (tenses) are a mixture of deictic time distinctions and aspect, often hard to distinguish. Some languages have no tenses as such. E.g., ‘Now (adverb), I am (deixis) still a student’, ‘My uncle called (deixis) me yesterday (adverb)’. 2.1.3. Spatial deixis Place deixis concerns the specification of locations relative to the location of the participants in the speech event. Deictic adverbs like here (including the speaker) and there (remote from the speaker) are the most direct examples of spatial deixis. Demonstratives like English this or that Present-day English, unlike Spanish and many other languages, organizes place deixis as a two- way distinction: here refers to a location close to the speaker and there refers to a location that is further away. In earlier English, however, there are a three-way distinction, as the now archaic deictic adverb yonde r contrasted with here and there to mark a position remote from both the speaker and hearer. Deictic expressions, even here and there , may have non-deictic readings. In addition to demonstratives and deictic adverbs, other elements can be used deictically:
‘The station is two hundred yards from the cathedral’ (this is not deixis because it doesn’t depend on the speaker’s point of view)
‘The station is two hundred yards away’ (this is deictic because it depends where you are)
‘He has parked his car behind the town hall’ (this is deictic but normally non-deictic because it depends where the town hall is) Spatial deixis is also frequently encoded in verbal roots or affixes. Mayan languages, for instance, have a relatively large group of verbs that encode a deictic feature. In English, the verbs considered to be deictic are come and go (as also bring and take), with a typical basic distinction between ‘motion towards speaker’ and ‘motion away from speaker’. Come in particular admits much more complex uses. ‘I am coming’ 2.1.4. Discourse deixis Discourse (or text) deixis concerns the use of expressions within some utterance to refer to some portion of the discourse that contains that utterance’. In a spoken or written discourse, it is frequent to refer to earlier or forthcoming segments of the discourse (‘in the previous paragraph). Since a discourse unfolds in time, it is natural to use temporal deictic terms although spatial terms are also frequent (‘in this chapter)’. 2.1.5. Social deixis Social deixis are those aspects of language structure that encoded that social identities of participants… or the social relationship between them, or between one of them and persons and entities referred to. This included ‘honorifics’, frequent in most languages of the world.

UNIT 2 SEMANTICS AND PRAGMATICS INTERFACE, Apuntes de Lingüística

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UNIT 2 : SEMANTICS AND PRAGMATICS INTERFACE

2.1. Deixis