DEIXIS AND DEFINITENESS

The purposes of the study: To master English deictic words. A. Deictic Words is one which takes some element of its meaning from the situation of the utterance in which it is used. Ex: Herman says I`ve finished my work, / refers to Herman and my work refers to a particular work done by Herman. Deictic words help the hearer to identify the referent of a referring expression throught its spatial or temporal relationships with the situation of an utterance. There are also a few predicate verbs which have a deictic ingredient. Ex: The verb come contains the nation toward the speaker. Some examples involve a psychological shifting for the purpose of interpreting one of the deictic terms. Ex: Come over there please! 1. Classification of Deictic Words Certain grammatical devices for indicating past, present, and future time must also be regarded as deictic, because they are defined by reference to the time of utterance. In reported speech, deictic terms occurring in the original utterance may be translated into others, possibly non-deictic terms, in order to preserve the original reference. Ex: The challenger : I`ll beat you tomorrow. The champion : The challenger said that he would beat me there the next day. (Five adjustment are made: I > the challenger, will > would, you > me, here > there, and tomorrow > the next day).

The function of deictic words Zonglish is an imaginative language. It is exactly like English in all respects, except that it contains no deictic terms at all. Ex: Would you like phone me later? Language without deictic terms could not serve the communicative needs of its users. It is not only clumsy, but it is also uncommunicative. The truth of a sentence containing a deictic expression can only be considered in relation to some hypothetical situation of utterance. Context of Utterance is small subpart of the universe of discourse shared by the speaker or the hearer, and includes facts about the topic of the conversation in which the utterance occurs, and also facts about the situation in which the conversation itself takes place. Ex: Two strangers in a train talking about weather, etc. The exact context of any utterance can never be specified with complete certainty. The notion of context is very flexible. Ex: Facts about times and places. B. Definiteness is a future of a noun phrases selected by a speaker to convey his assumption that the hearer will be able to identify the referent to the noun phrase usually because it is the only thing of its kind in the context of the utterance, or because it is unique in the universe of discourse. Ex: - The teacher > are definite - She

Novelists typically use definiteness in strikingly abnormal ways in the opening passages of novels. The three main types of definite nounphrase: 1. proper names. 2. Personal pronouns. 3. Phrases introduced by a definite determiner, such as the, this, that, his. Some Important Points a. Deictic expressions are those which take some element of their meaning directly from the immediate situation of the utterance in which they are used, e. g. from the speaker, the hearer, the time and the place of the utterance. b. The availability of deictic expressions makes a language a much more `portable` instrument than it would otherwise be: we can use the same words on different occasions, at different times and place. c. The definiteness of referring expressions tells us nothing about the referent itself, but rather relates to the question of whether the referent has been mentioned in the preceding discourse. d. The definiteness of a referring expression gives the hearer a clue in identifying its referent.