Deictic Verbs Research Articles

Quantitatively Measuring Developmental Characteristics in the Use of Deictic Verbs for Japanese-Speaking Children: A Pilot Study

The acquisition of deictic verbs is a significant milestone in language development. This complex process requires an understanding of the interplay between the personal pronouns “I/you” and deictic verbs. Although demonstrating the cognitive processes associated with deictic shifting through data is valuable, research issues regarding data accuracy and the spatial arrangement of the self and other remain unresolved. This pilot study aimed to quantitatively measure the body movements of Japanese-speaking children during their utterances of “come/go”. Twelve typically developing children aged 6–7 participated in this study. Multiple scenarios were set up where the researcher presented phrases using “come/go” with deictic gestures, such as moving one’s upper body forward or backward, and the participant replied with “come/go”. When performing a role, the researcher sat face-to-face or side-by-side with the participant, depending on the type of question–response. It is possible that there is a learning process whereby verbal responses using “come/go” align with corresponding body movements in the specific question type. This process is deeply involved in the development of perspective-taking abilities. Future research with relatively large samples and cross-cultural comparisons is warranted to deepen the understanding of this linguistic acquisition process and its implications.

Boundary-crossing situations and the use of deictic verbs in Finnish and Estonian expressions of non-actual motion

ABSTRACT This article discusses the specific use of deictic verbs for encoding boundary-crossing situations in descriptions of non-actual motion, i.e. dynamic depictions of static spatial configurations (e.g. The road comes from the tunnel). We analyse data elicited with visual stimuli from speakers of Finnish and Estonian to show that venitive (‘come’) and andative (‘go’) deictic verbs tend to appear in boundary-crossing contexts of entering and exiting. This pattern applies to both actual and non-actual motion descriptions produced by the same speakers, thus showing pervasiveness in the expression of both concrete and abstract meanings. We suggest that this tendency can be interpreted in terms of functional deixis: motion (actual or non-actual) encoded in relation to the speaker’s visual and interactive circle of attention. Considering the relevance of spatial boundaries for event perception, boundary-crossing situations can be expected to show specific encoding patterns not only in the verb-framed languages, in which the expression of these situations typically requires the use of Path verbs, but also in the satellite-framed languages of the Talmian typology. Extensive variation between participants in our study indicates that in Finnish and Estonian, the use of deictic verbs in boundary-crossing situations is an optional strategy instead of a constraint.

Acquisition and Generalization of the Use of Deictic Verbs in a Child with Autism Spectrum Disorder

Acquisition and Generalization of the Use of Deictic Verbs in a Child with Autism Spectrum Disorder

영어 속담의 구조적 및 인지적 해석과 영한 대조 분석

The goal of this paper is to address the characteristics of syntactic and semantic structures of English proverbs and the contrastive analysis of English and Korean proverbs from a cognitive perspective. In English proverbs, linking verbs, deictic verbs, causative verbs, possessive verbs, imperative sentences, and antithesis·parallelism are found as characteristics of syntactic structures. From examining semantic structures, the words used in English proverbs are ambiguous, symbolic, non-compositional, and metaphoric. Moreover, personification is abundantly developed due to the non-human subject transitive verb constructions. As a result of comparing English and Korean proverbs, English shows the aspect of a result-precedence word order, whereas Korean has a cause-precedence word order.

Aspectual deictic verbs in Mandarin Chinese

Aspectual deictic verbs in Mandarin Chinese

A Qualitative Study of Actual and Non-Actual Motion Expressions in Telugu and its Implications

This paper examines the similarities and differences between actual motion (AM) and non-actual motion (NAM) expressions in Telugu via a qualitative approach. The findings revealed the following similarities: (a) the extensive use of generic deictic verbs, (b) the obligatory use of case markers for encoding Path, (c) the limited number of path verbs and their uses, and (d) the use of spatial nouns for expressing Region. In addition, the findings also revealed that AM had a reasonable number of Manner expressions, whereas NAM contained almost no information about Manner.

Spatial deixis in Yashar Kemal’s Iron Earth Copper Sky

Mekân dilbilimde zaman, kip, kişi gibi temel bir anlamsal kategoriyi ifade eder. Uzamsal varlıklar mekân içinde Gestalt psikolojideki şekil-zemin ilişkisine benzer bir ilişki aracılığıyla konumlanır veya yer değiştirirler. Şekil durumundaki somut varlıklar, merkezdeki konuşucunun yakınından uzağına doğru yayılan mesafelerde, mekânsal gösterime dayalı sistem aracılığıyla konumlanabilir. Mekânsal gösterimin merkezinde, zemin durumundaki konuşucu “ben” bulunur. Şekil durumundaki somut varlıklara işaret eden mekânsal gösterimler konuşucunun konumu ve kimliğine göre değişir. Bu değişimden dolayı konuşma olayının cereyan ettiği edimbilimsel bağlam mekânsal bilginin tayininde önem kazanır. Kurmaca bir metinde mekânsal gösterimi dilbilimsel yöntemlerle ele alan araştırmaların sayısı azdır. Dilsel ve dil-dışı bağlamın kesişim alanında yer alan mekânsal gösterim nedir? Mekânsal gösterim kodları nelerdir ve ne sıklıkla kullanılır? Türkçede dilbilgisel bir kategori olarak mekânsal gösterim nasıl kodlanır? Çalışmada bu ve benzeri sorulara cevap bulmak, literatüre kavramsal katkı sunmak ve tipolojik çalışmalara veri sağlamak amaçlanmaktadır. Bunun için Yaşar Kemal’in Yer Demir Gök Bakır adlı romanından seçilen, mekânsal gösterim içeren dört yüz on bir (n=411) maddelik örneklem incelenmiş ve sonuçlar betimlenmiştir. Buna göre, “kaynak”tan “hedef”e yönelik hareketi karşılayan gösterimsel fiiller iki yüz otuz (n=230) maddede ve merkeze yakın/uzak anlamlarını veren gösterimsel nominaller yüz seksen bir (n=181) maddede tespit edilmiştir. Mekânsal adlar hâl ekleri, iyelik ekleri ve son-edatlarla öbekleşebilir. Mekânsal gösterim bilgisi yalnızca sözcük, öbek ya da tümcelerden değil; daha yoğun ve doğru şekilde sözbirimlerden çıkarılır. Bu nedenle mekânsal gösterim üzerine yapılacak dilbilimsel çalışmalarda iletişim ortamının edimbilimsel bağlamına ve sözcelerdeki metindilbilimsel gönderimlere dikkat edilmelidir.

The Semantic Nature of Deictic Verb Take

The Semantic Nature of Deictic Verb Take

Translating deictic motion verbs among Bulgarian, Croatian, and Serbian: A corpus-based study

This article deals with translating South Slavic deictic verbs. Specifically, we consider translations among Bulgarian, Croatian, and Serbian. Deictic verbs are verbs whose interpretation is dependent on the location of speech-act participants (Fillmore 1997), such as come and go. In research on Slavic, certain motion verbs prefixes have been discussed as deictic prefixes (see Grenoble 1991, Filipović 2009, Łozińska 2018). Particular emphasis in this analysis is on the prefixed motion verbs dojda/doći, idvam/dolaziti, otida/otići, and otivam/odlaziti found in Bulgarian, Croatian, and Serbian literary texts and their translations. We present a brief quantitative overview and conduct a qualitative study of deixis-related meanings, paying necessary attention to other non-deictic meanings. Special attention is given to the constructional interplay of various deictic elements that co-occur with deictic verbs. Since we deal with literary texts and not everyday interaction, we consider the genre and context and apply the notion of viewpoint, which also covers the mental viewpoint adopted by the narrator, in addition to the deictic viewpoint of one of the speech participants. In the study, we observed shifts in point-of-view from deictic to non-deictic construal and vice versa, and from dynamic to static construal. These phenomena relate to the fact that in a text with a third person narrator, there is no innate deictic centre, while in casual conversation, the interlocutors create the deictic centre. The results show a preference for using come when motion towards a protagonist is described in a neutral context.

ON THE METAPHORIC DEVELOPMENT OF DEICTIC VERBS

The paper introduces the results of the study based on the assumption that the idiomatic usage of deictic verbs develops some additional semantic features which can be characterized as metaphoric development of their literary meaning. The paper will present how items with a definite prototypical deictic meaning develop the emotionalevaluative meaning fulfilling a pragmasemantic function of deictability. The research is determined by the necessity to study the structural and semantic features of different types of linguistic signs as well as by the anthropocentric approach according to which the language is observed not as an abstract system but as a background for the individual’s communicative and cognitive activity.

Regional accents modulate perspective in geographical space

In this study, participants listened to first-person statements that mentioned a character who was approaching a geographical location close to (Tenerife, Canary Islands) or distant from the participant (Madrid, Spanish peninsula), pronounced with either the participants' local or a distal regional accent. Participants more often judged approaching statements as coherent when they refer to a close place pronounced with local accent or refer to a distant place with distal accent, rather than when they refer to a close place with distal accent or to a distant place with local accent. These results strongly suggest that the local accent induces listeners to keep their own geographical perspective, whereas the distal accent determines shifting to another’s perspective. In sum, a subtle paralinguistic cue, the speaker’s regional accent, modulates the participants’ geographic perspective when they listen to identical first-person sentences with approaching deictic verbs.

Improving the Use of Deictic Verbs in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder

ABSTRACT Background: Children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) show difficulty in comprehension and production of the deictic verbs “come/go.” Objective: To examine whether introducing conditions related to daily conversations into training would improve the use of deictic verbs. Methods: Six Japanese children with ASD participated. We set up multiple scenes where the questioner presented the sentence using “come/go” with/without deictic gestures, and children with ASD replied with “come/go.” The conditions such as spatial relations between the two parties (face-to-face or side-by-side) and presentations of the gestures (moving one’s arm toward or away from the body or moving one’s upper body forward/backward) were introduced. Results: The appropriate use of deictic verbs during training and in daily life situations among children with ASD increased. Conclusions: Training children with ASD to look in the direction indicated by the questioner and to synchronize their bodies with the questioner’s movements promotes their acquisition of deictic verbs.

A contrastive approach to the deictic verb complex in Korean and Manchu

A contrastive approach to the deictic verb complex in Korean and Manchu

Perspective-Taking With Deictic Motion Verbs in Spanish: What We Learn About Semantics and the Lexicon From Heritage Child Speakers and Adults.

In English, deictic verbs of motion, such as come can encode the perspective of the speaker, or another individual, such as the addressee or a narrative protagonist, at a salient reference time and location, in the form of an indexical presupposition. By contrast, Spanish has been claimed to have stricter requirements on licensing conditions for venir (“to come”), only allowing speaker perspective. An open question is how a bilingual learner acquiring both English and Spanish reconciles these diverging language-specific restrictions. We face this question head on by investigating narrative productions of young Spanish-English bilingual heritage speakers of Spanish, in comparison to English monolingual and Spanish dominant adults and children. We find that the young heritage speakers produce venir in linguistic contexts where most Spanish adult speakers do not, but where English monolingual speakers do, and also resemble those of young monolingual Spanish speakers of at least one other Spanish dialect, leading us to generate two mutually-exclusive hypotheses: (a) the encoding of speaker perspective in the young heritage children is cross-linguistically influenced by the more flexible and dominant language (English), resulting in a wider range of productions by these malleable young speakers than the Spanish grammar actually allows, or (b) the young Spanish speakers are exhibiting productions that are in fact licensed in the grammar, but which are pruned away in the adult productions, being supplanted by other forms as the lexicon is enriched. Given independent evidence of the heritage speakers' robust Spanish linguistic competence, we turn to systematically-collected acceptability judgments of three dialectal varieties of monolingual adult Spanish speakers of the distribution of perspective-taking verbs, to assess their competence and adjudicate between (a) and (b). We find that adults accept venir in contexts in which they do not produce it, leading us to argue that (a) venir is not obligatorily speaker-oriented in Spanish, as has been claimed, (b) adults may not produce venir in these contexts because they instead select more specific motion verbs, and (c) for heritage bilingual children, the more dominant language (English) may support the grammatically licensed but lexically-constrained productions in Spanish.

Español antiguo recudir y el verbo acudir. Un ejemplo de semántica diacrónica cognitiva

El artículo se ocupa del verbo medieval español recudir y su continuador moderno acudir. El método utilizado es el que deriva de la semántica diacrónica cognitiva. El verbo recudir era un verbo deíctico y de movimiento con dirección implicada, movimiento hacia atrás con una dimensión prospectiva detrás. A partir del s. XIII aparece un segundo prototipo con un cambio en la señalización deíctica y un cambio en la dirección prospectiva implicada: la dirección del movimiento es la opuesta, hacia delante con una dimensión prospectiva delante. También el s. XIII aparece un nuevo lexema, acudir, que continúa el segundo prototipo y que acaba por reemplazar recudir. El nuevo lexema presenta como sufijo la preposición a-, que responde al cambio de señalización deíctica y al cambio de la dirección prospectiva implicada del segundo prototipo.

An experimental study on deictic verbs and the coding patterns of deixis in Ilami Kurdish: A comparative study

Conducting a video-based experiment in English, Japanese and Thai, Matsumoto et al. (2017) report that deictic verbs are more frequently used when the motion is not just toward the speaker but also into his/her functional space (i.e. functional HERE of the speaker) defined by limits of interaction and visibility as well as when the motion is accompanied by an interactional behaviour of the Figure such as greeting the speaker. They claim that directional venitive prepositional phrases (henceforth PPs) like toward me do not exhibit this feature, though. This paper aims to reevaluate these proposals (Matsumoto et al. 2017) in Ilami Kurdish (henceforth IK), thereby figuring out whether the functional nature of deictic verbs observed in the three studied languages is also attested in this dialect. In line with the findings reported by Matsumoto et al. (2017), results of this research reveal that the semantics of venitive verbs of motion in IK is spatial and functional at the same time. In other words, these verbs are more often used in the verbal descriptions of the IK participants, when the Figure shares a functional space with the speaker induced by limits of interaction and visibility, and also when he/she smiles at or greets the speaker. Importantly, results show that venitive PPs in IK can be functional in nature or add some functional meaning (in addition to their spatial meaning) to the verb, so that participants utilize venitive adpositions along with the venitive verb to add emphasis on the kind of motion (to be a venitive one) and express that the Figure would be “very close” to the speaker at the end of motion.

Source/Goal (a)symmetry

Abstract This paper compares the expression of Source and Goal in German and Polish, on the basis of descriptions elicited with a series of video clips. As satellite-framed languages (Talmy 1985, 2000), both German and Polish mainly rely on grammatical morphemes to encode Path of motion with respect to Source and Goal. Nevertheless, despite this shared typological feature, these languages also display fine morphosyntactic and semantic differences. Our study reveals that the expression of Source and Goal is more asymmetrical in German than in Polish, both in types of linguistic resources and in semantic distinctions. We show that German speakers tend to combine Path satellites with Path verbs – including both deictic satellites and deictic verbs – more frequently in Source-oriented events, depicting them with finer semantic distinctions than Goal-oriented events. In the expression of the Ground, however, they tend to make finer distinctions in the expression of Goals as compared to Sources, by using a greater variety of prepositions. Polish speakers, by contrast, tend to express Source and Goal in a more symmetrical fashion. These cross-linguistic differences are discussed in the light of language-specific characteristics and their role in the expression – symmetrical or asymmetrical – of Source and Goal.

한국어교재의 지시용언 분석

The goal of this research is to show various aspects and characteristics of deictic verbs used in Korean language education textbooks. In order to accomplish this goal, this paper examined how deictic verbs were suggested as new vocabulary, as target grammatical items, and in texts like reading materials and listening scripts. Data sources were from five series of Korean textbooks which are widely used in well-known Korean language education institutes. The findings of data analysis showed that deictic verbs have not been-suggested as target grammatical items unlike other reference items. Rather, they have been suggested as limited conjugational forms only with simple translations in new vocabulary section. The deictic verbs in the texts showed lower frequency than those in Korean native speakers

Деривационный потенциал синонимичных глаголов ощущать и чувствовать: сравнительный анализ

The article is devoted to the problem of functional differentiation of synonymous deictic verbs ощущать (to perceive) and чувствовать (to feel). Comparison of their word-formative clusters and contextual analysis of speech usage of their derivatives allowed the researcher to identify correlation of lexico-semantic variants and derivatives. The conclusion is made about higher word-formative potential of the second lexeme (23 and 45 derivatives correspondingly). It is shown that among derivatives of the verb чувствовать , words with the meaning “experience emotional state” prevail, whereas the meaning “understand intuitively” is most frequent among derivatives of the verb ощущать.

ПРОПАДАЮЩИЕ УЧАСТНИКИ СИТУАЦИИ В КХМЕРСКОМ ПРЕДЛОЖЕНИИ: СЕМАНТИЧЕСКАЯ ИНКОРПОРАЦИЯ, ЭКСКОРПОРАЦИЯ, НУЛЕВАЯ АНАФОРА

The paper deals with representation of obligatory participants of a situation described by the verb which do not get a syntactic role in the syntactic structure of a Khmer sentence, i. e. incorporation in the verb semantic structure, excorporation into a lexical complex, deictic zero, zero anaphors. Special attention is paid to the role of lexical complex, which is a unique resource of the Khmer language, and its use for implicit and explicit representation of the participants of the situation described. An issue of a particular interest is participants’ representation as a component of a lexical complex, rather than a component of the sentence syntactic structure. Language data of Modern Khmer, Middle Khmer, and Old Khmer is used to show that this mode of representation has been used throughout the whole period of the evolution of Khmer beginning with the Old Khmer inscriptions. An attempt is made to reveal the functional character of the phenomenon discussed. It is maintained that this strategy is used for semantic derivation, for a more detailed conceptualization of the situation described, as well as for word polysemy elimination in the text. Examples are cited where lexical complexes with incorporated participants are used to make up for the inherent semantic emptiness of predicates of evaluation. In case of participants incorporated in deictic verbs, the deictic zero in Khmer may refer to participants other than “observer”. Specific features of zero anaphora in Khmer are also mentioned.