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Unit7 - Deixis & Definiteness

This document discusses deixis and definiteness in language. It explains that deictic words take their meaning from the context of the utterance, including who is speaking, when and where. Deictic terms help identify referents based on their relationship to the uttering situation. The document also discusses definiteness and how definite and indefinite articles are used based on whether an entity has been established in the conversation context. Finally, it explains that utterances can only be considered true in relation to a hypothetical situation of utterance.

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100 views2 pages

Unit7 - Deixis & Definiteness

This document discusses deixis and definiteness in language. It explains that deictic words take their meaning from the context of the utterance, including who is speaking, when and where. Deictic terms help identify referents based on their relationship to the uttering situation. The document also discusses definiteness and how definite and indefinite articles are used based on whether an entity has been established in the conversation context. Finally, it explains that utterances can only be considered true in relation to a hypothetical situation of utterance.

Uploaded by

Nesreen Abosaleh
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© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Unit7- Deixis & Definiteness

- Entry test, p.65.

- Most words mean what they mean regardless of who use them, and when and where they are
used. Nevertheless, all languages do contain small sets of words whose meaning vary according
to who uses them, and where and when they are used. These words are called deictic words.

- Deictic: a word which takes some element of its meaning from the situation (the speaker, the
addressee, the time and the place) of the utterance in which it is used. (Example and Practice,
p.66). Such deictic terms help the hearer to identify the referent of a referring expression
through its spatial or temporal relationship with the situation of utterance. There are a few
predicates which have a deictic ingredient (Practice, 67).

- Deictic terms can be interpreted flexibly. (This place could refer to the immediate place or to a
broader meaning; classroom, or institution).

- There are certain grammatical devices for indicating past, present, and future time which must
be regarded as deictic because they are defined by reference to the time of utterance. (Practice,
p68).

- Behavior of deictic terms in reported speech:


Deictic terms occurring in the original utterance may be translated into other terms in order to
preserve the original reference. (Practice, p.69).

- So, since deictic terms take their meaning from the situation of utterance, an utterance
reporting an utterance in a different situation cannot always faithfully use the deictic terms of
the original utterance.

- The truth of a sentence containing a deictic expression can only be considered in relation to
some hypothetical situation of utterance. (Practice, p.71).

- Context: the context of an utterance is a small subpart of the universe of discourse shared by
speaker and 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.

- The exact context of any utterance can never be specified with complete certainty. The notion
of context is very flexible. Facts about items and places very distant from the time and place of
the utterance itself can be part of the context of the utterance, if the topic of the conversation
happens to be about these distant times and places. (Example and practice, p.72).

- The notion of context and the notion of definiteness:


Rule: if some entity is the ONLY entity of its kind in the context of an utterance, then the definite
article (the) is the appropriate article to use in referring to that entity. (Practice: p. 72-73).
Unit7- Deixis & Definiteness

- Definiteness: when something is introduced for the first time into a conversation, it is
appropriate to use the indefinite article a. Once something is established in the context of the
conversation, it is appropriate to use the. However, the definite article the is not the only word
which indicates definiteness in English. (Example and practice: p.73-74).

- Authors often begin a narrative using a number of definite expressions in order to draw the
reader into the narrative fast, by giving the impression that the writer and the reader already
share a number of contextual assumptions. (Practice: p. 75).

- Three main types of definite noun phrases in English:


 Proper names
 Personal pronouns (he, it)
 Phrases introduced by a definite determiner (this, that, the)

- Not every noun phrase using the so-called ‘definite article’ the is necessarily semantically
definite. In generic sentence, one can find a phrase beginning with the where the hearer cannot
be expected to identify the referent, often because there is in fact no referent; the expression is
not a referring expression. (Practice: p.76).

- The question of truth in relation to definiteness:


Utterances, which differ only in that one, contains a definite referring expressions where the
other has an indefinite referring expression do not differ in truth value (Provided they have the
same referent). (p.76).

- The definiteness of a referring expression tells us nothing about the referent itself. But rather
relates to the question of whether the referent has been mentioned in the preceding discourse.

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