1. 1. Deixis and Reference Universidad de San Buenaventura Bachelors Degree in English Language Teaching Theoretical Linguistics II By: Luis Fernando Castaeda, Jessica Meagan Fullerton & Lois Torres Brown April 2015
2. 2. Concepts that will be covered throughout this presentation: What is Deixis? Types and Examples of Deixis. What is Reference ? Types and Examples of Reference Works Cited
3. 3. What is Deixis? Deixis is the pointing or specifying function of some words (as definite articles and demonstrative pronouns) whose denotation changes from one discourse to another. (Mirriam Webster, 2015) The elements of Deixis include four lables: time, place, person and discourse. Time Place Person Discours e Discourse
4. 4. Types of Deixis 1. Person Deixis: personal pronoun encoding the roles of the participants when: The Speaker refers to: themself: I , Me and we and us. the addressee: you (singular and plural) Other people or entities.: he/him, she/her, it, they/them 2. Place Deixis: spacial location of people and objects relative to the participants in the speech event. The Speakers Purposes: Identify entities: demonstrative pronouns (this/these ; that/those) Inform about location of an entity: adverbs (here/there), prepositions (above/below) Acknowledge Location of an entity: (come /go) Proximal Distal
5. 5. Types of Deixis 3. Time Deixis: locating time or points or intervals on the time axis using the moment of utterance, as a reference point. All participants share the same deictic time origin: having the same now Time is relative to the act of speaking. Diectic elements that can be identified: Time Adverbials: before, yesterday, last year (before utterance) today, now (moment of utterance), soon, tomorrow (after utterance) Tenses: Rachael baked a cake. Past Simple Rachael is baking a cake. Present Continuous Rachael had baked a cake when the door bell rang. Past Perfect (1st Moment of Event 2nd Moment of Utterance) (1s The Moment of Utterance or at same Moment of the Event ) The Time Reference (The Moment of the Event precedes the Time Reference which precedes the Moment of Utterance)The moment of the event and the time reference are non-deictic but the moment of utterance and the time reference are deictic.
6. 6. Types of Deixis 4. Discourse Deixis: the use of deictic expressions to reference a portion of a discourse relative to the speakers current location in the discourse. Examples of these deictic expressions: On the last page, in the final paragraph. At this point we are going to return to the previous chapter. I bet you havent seen this movie. Thats the most obsurd thing Ive ever heard.
7. 7. What is Reference? Reference is a part of semantics which seeks to explain how words express meaning. A word suggests an idea to the hearer and therefore the idea is connected to a real world object. It is how speakers denote meaning as a property of linguistics expression.
8. 8. Types of Reference 1. Definite: it is an act of identifying entities through linguistic expressions through their properties: Example: The florist delivered flowers to her. Distinguishing Elements: Definite determiners: the, our Pronouns: I, she Names: Michael, Toronto Locative Adverbs : here, there Adverbs Temporal: Now, yesterday The noun phrase can be identified by both the speaker and listener even without complete information about the referential target.
9. 9. Types of Reference 2. Indefinite: the success of the act of reference does not depend on the individual features only the class. Example: A florist delivered flowers to her. Distinguishing elements : Indefinite Determiner: a, many Indefinite Pronoun: anyone Locative Adverbs : anywhere Adverbs Temporal: sometime The particular florist involved is unknown and irrelevant for the speaker and hearer whether or not they can identify the reference target. It is any florist.
10. 10. Types of Reference 3. Generic: they are nouns which do not pick out a particular entity but a general class. Examples: The airplane is a safe mode of transportation. An airplane is a safe mode of transportation. Airplanes are a safe mode of transportation. All the above statements explain that a reliable means of transportation is by way of airplane. Statements about the general class.
11. 11. Works Cited N.A. 2015 . Deixis. Dictionary. Mirriam Webster.Retrieved from: http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/deixis Lingualinkslibrary. 2004. What is Reference? SIL International. Retrieved from: http://www-01.sil.org/linguistics/glossaryoflinguisticterms/WhatIsReference.htm Semantics and Pragmatics Deixis. 2013. The Virtual Linguistics Campus. Retrieved from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-LK-lc0wLf8 Semantics and Pragmatics Reference. 2013. The Virtual Linguistics Campus. Retrieved from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_NtVeofqUKA