Time

deixis makes ultimate reference to participant-role. It is important to distinguish the moment of utterance or Coding Time (CT) from the moment of reception or Receiving Time (RT) There are a number of aspects of pure time deixis, where there is no direct interaction with non-deictic methods of time reckoning. These include Tense, and the deictic time adverbs like now, then, soon, recently, and so on.

Examples: 1. Pull the trigger now! (Gestural use) 2. Im now working on a PhD. (Interminable period) Fillmore (1975) notes, there are two kinds of referent: 1. Refers to the entire span itself, e.g: Tomorrow is Wednesday. 2. To point within the relevant span, e.g: Dennis hit Murphy with a baseball bat yesterday.

Further

aspects of the interaction of calendrical reckoning and time deixis arise when we consider complex time adverbials like Last Monday, next year, or this afternoon. These consist of a deictic modifier, this, next, last, etc. Together with a non-deictic name or measure word.

 The

interpretation of adverbials in English is systematically determined by: a) The calendrical vs. Non-calendrical modes of reckoning b) T he distinction between common noun units like weeks, months, years, and proper name units, like Monday, December, and perhaps afternoon, which cannot be used as measures.

 It

concerns the specifications of locations relative to anchorage points in the speech event. Location can be specified relative to other objects or reference points, as in: The station is two hundred yards from the cathedral. o It can be specified relative to the location of the participant at the time speaking. Its two hundred yards away.

 There

are some pure place deictic words, such as the adverbs here and there, and the demonstrative pronouns this and that. Examples: 1. Place it here. 2. Bring that here and take this there. The adverbs here and there are often thought of a simple contrasts on a proximal distal dimension, stretching away from the speakers location. 1. How are things there? 2. Were there.

It concerns the use of expressions within some utterance to refer to some portion of the discourse that contains that utterance (including the utterance itself). The distinction between discourse deixis and anaphora: Anaphora: concerns the use of (usually) a pronoun to refer to the same referent as some prior term. e.g: Harrys a sweetheart; hes so considerate. (Harry and he can be said to co-referential. It has the same referent)

Discourse deixis: a pronoun refers to a linguistic expression (or chunck of discourse) itself. e.g: A: Thats a rhinoceros B: Spell it for me It refers not to the referent, the beast itself, but to the word rhinoceros. It is not doing duty for a use of rhinoceros but rather for a mention of it.