deictic
- adjective
- /ˈdaɪktɪk/
- Specialized
:
deíctico
- Some of these co-speech gestures depict things in an iconic (illustrative) or deictic (indexical) way.
- deictic function
- deictic gestures
- deictic reference
Examples
-
In the sentence 'I will meet you here tomorrow,' the word here is a deictic expression that relies on context to convey its meaning.
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Of course, I am hardly the first to point out the special nature of deictic terms.
Academic text (1998) -
By their very nature, deictic terms embody the second set of assumptions I described before.
Academic text (1998) -
Here, they combine deictic and admonitory roles.
Academic text (2006) -
In effect, each usage marks a different relation between the morphosyntactic form and the deictic functions of you.
Academic text (1994) -
We also must recognize text that is not only deictic (Leu, 2000) but ambiguous in nature (Belshaw, 2012).
Academic text (2015) -
The usefulness of second-person narrative, as I see it, relates in large measure to its deictic qualities and to its pragmatic connotations.
Academic text (1994) -
Deictic gestures included gestures locating objects in the gesture space and pointing gestures.
Academic text (2013) -
In the phrase 'I am speaking now,' the term now functions as a deictic word, indicating the specific time of the utterance.
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When she pointed to the book and said, 'This is my favorite,' the word this is an example of a deictic term that references the context of the discussion.
Compounds
- Specialized
A word that shows person, place and time compared to the speaker or listener
How Context-Dependent
Surface Forms
Morphology
deictic = deixis (transparent) = deict + ic
A regular adjectival formation: the technical noun 'deixis' + the productive suffix '-ic' yields 'deictic' meaning 'relating to deixis'.
Etymology
Deictic comes from the Greek root deik- meaning 'to show' or 'to point', the same idea you see in index or indicate. So a deictic word is a 'pointing' word whose meaning depends on who is speaking and when.