Sunday, August 5, 2018

Deixis

Deixis refers to words and phrases which cannot be understand without additional contextual information. Examples of deictic expressions include time and space. Personal pronouns are also deictic.

The following sentences contain examples of person deixis:

I love movies.
We have already had dinner.

The following sentences contain examples of place deixis:

We love living in this city.
They were sitting over there.

The following sentences contain examples of temporal deixis:

They want to start now.
We finished yesterday.

Deictic expressions must be understood in their proper context. Pronouns such as  I can have many interpretations because they can refer to many different speakers. To interpret deictic expressions, the speaker and the hearer require adequate information for their conversation.

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