semantics

Semantics and pragmatics

Extentions of spatial deixis

Person deixis

Social deixis

Meaning and context

Deixis

Information structure

Deixis refers to words and phrases, that cannot be fully understood without additional contextual information.

According to Saeed (2001: 173), deixis commits a speaker to set up a frame of reference around him/herself.

Spatial 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.

Personal deixis (person deixis) concerns itself with the grammatical persons involved in an utterance, those directly involved (e.g. the speaker, the addressee), those not directly involved.

Social deixis concerns the social information that is encoded within various expressions, such as relative social status and familiarity.

Deixis is an important field studied in pragmatics, semantics and linguistics. Deixis refers to the phenomenon wherein understanding the meaning of. certain words and phrases in an utterance requires contextual information.

We have seen how different types of knowledge contribute to the understanding of utterances by providing background information.In this way, speakers usually guess what kind of knowledge their listeners have and speak accordingly.

All languages mark some kind of division of space around the speaker and some kind of division of time in relation to the act of speaking. The most common resource to do this is by using pronouns

In many languages, spatial deixis terms such as demonstratives are also used to refer to time.

Both English and Spanish show this:

That year was much less drier than this one is.

Ese año fué mucho menos seco que éste.

Saeed also explains how there is a further deictic system that grammaticalizes the roles of participants, such as the current speaker, the addressee and other participants.

The pronoun systems of many languages also include information about the social identity and/or status of participants in a conversation. In English the codification of the treatment of respect is not grammaticalized.

Saeed establishes three sources of knowledge a speaker has to estimate.

1. Knowledge computable from physical context.

2. Knowledge that is available from what has already been said.

3. Knowledge available from background or common knowledge.

In this section we study the ways in which context affects this understanding. Since a cognitive perspective on meaning and/or semantics is strongly context-sensitive.

TYPES

Personal: The role of the person (Pronouns)

Time: Referent in time (today, yesterday, now etc.)

Social: To be more polite (Would you like.../ Do you want...)

Textual: Fragments of the text that has been said.

Spatial: (here, there , over there etc.)

This transference is frequently described in terms of a metaphorical shift from the more concrete domain of physical space to the much more abstract concept of time.

Some examples:

Here is where we will place the statue.

She was sitting over there.

In English. The most common one is by addressing people not by their first names, but using Mr / Mrs / Miss before their surnames.

The first includes the kind of knowledge obtained by filling in deictic expressions.

The type of knowledge available from what has already been said is what can be viewed as the talk itself. This is often called discourse understood as some kind of context.

These differences can also be illustrated when comparing the codification of possession in both English and Spanish. In English, possession and gender are codified together in the word referring to owner as in.

His / Her car contrasting with:

Su coche (both genders)

Speakers organize or package their utterances depending on how they account for these estimates of knowledge. This organization is called information structure.