Deixis
Certain types of expression, called deictic or indexical expressions (or simply deictics or indexicals), are defined as those which make reference to some aspect of the context of utterance as an essential part of their meaning. Examples would be the English words here and there and their equivalents in other languages, such as Chinese zhe and na, or Hungarian ez and az (‘this’, ‘that’). Deictic expressions have the peculiarity that their reference is relative to the situation in which they are used. They lack any independently paraphraseable sense: what they mean cannot be given any general description other than describing a procedure for isolating the intended referent. The meaning of this in (12), for example, cannot be described except by saying that it refers to some entity in the speaker’s context of utterance – probably a person, but also perhaps an electronic chess board, a computer, or an introductory book about chess:
The speaker of (12) might well accompany their utterance with a gesture pointing to, or otherwise indicating, the object they have in mind. In the absence of such a gesture, the listener has to infer what the intended referent is. This they will partly be able to do as a result of the deictic system available in the language. The hearer of (12), for instance, would be justified in assuming that the speaker is referring to something nearby: if this were not the case, the deictic that would have been used instead (for example if the speaker and hearer had passed someone on the street and a few moments later, when they had disappeared from sight, the speaker exclaimed That was my old chess coach!). The meaning or sense of this, therefore, could be described as an instruction to the hearer to identify some likely referent in their near proximity, and the meaning of that as the instruction to identify some likely referent further away.
There is not nearly enough space here for a full discussion of the semantics of deictics in the languages of the world. Different sorts of deixis, or reference to elements of the context, have been observed cross-linguistically. These include the following:
• person deixis, by which speaker (I), hearer (you) and other entities relevant to the discourse (he/she/it/they) are referred to;
• temporal deixis (now, then, tomorrow); and
• discourse deixis, which refers to other elements of the discourse in which the deictic expression occurs (A: You stole the cash. B: That’s a lie).
Here, we will confine ourselves to a discussion, closely based on Diessel (1999), of spatial deixis as it is manifested in demonstratives, of which English this and that are cardinal examples.
All languages have at least two deictically contrastive demonstratives: the this demonstrative is usually called a proximal, the that demonstrative is called a distal. Sometimes these demonstratives are uninflected particles; in other languages, demonstratives are marked for gender, number and/or case and may combine with derivational affixes or with other free forms (Diessel 1999: 13). The demonstrative systems of some languages may be dizzyingly complex: Inuktitut (Eskimo-Aleut, Canada), for example, shows 686 forms in the demonstrative system (Denny 1982: 372).
Deictic systems which, unlike English, involve more than two deictic terms are of two basic sorts: distance-oriented systems, where the deicticcentre (usually but not necessarily the speaker) is the only point of reference for the location of the referent, and person-oriented systems, where the hearer serves as another reference point (Diessel 1999: 50). Yimas (Sepik-Ramu, Papua New Guinea; Diessel 1999: 39) is an example of a distance-oriented deictic system, with the singular deictics p-k ‘proximal’, m-n ‘medial’, p-n ‘distal’. The proximal and distal forms could be translated as ‘this here’ and ‘that over there’ respectively; the medial term means something like ‘that just over there’. Pangasinan (Austronesian, Philippines; Diessel 1999: 39) is an example of a person-oriented system, with the singular forms (i)yá ‘this near the speaker’, (i)tán ‘that near the hearer’ and (i)mán ‘that away from both speaker and hearer’.
Distance is not the only feature expressed by demonstratives: they may also indicate such variables as whether the referent is in or out of sight, at a higher or lower elevation, up- or downstream, moving towards or away from the deicticcentre, and others (Diessel 1999: 50). The deictic system of Khasi (Mon-Khmer, India; Diessel 1999: 42) combines a number of these categories, indicating, as well as the gender or plurality of the referent, its distance with respect to speaker and hearer, its elevation, or its visibility (see Table 3.1):
Demonstratives usually also provide some qualitative information about the referent: ‘they may indicate whether the referent is a location, object or person, whether it is animate or inanimate, human or non-human, female or male, a single entity or a set, or conceptualized as a restricted or extended entity’ (Diessel 1999: 50). In Apalai (Carib, Brazil), for instance, there are two deictic series, one for animate, the other for inanimate referents, and each series distinguishes collective from non-collective referents:
