Personal Deixis in Hindi and Sinhala Languages

Abstract

Pragmatics is a subfield of linguistics which is concerned on how speech situation or context shapes meaning of a communicative act. Pragmatics focuses on conversational implicatures and factors like situational context, mental status of the individuals and proceeding dialogues shape what speaker implies and a listener infers. Deixis belongs to the field of pragmatics, and it refers to the phenomenon where meaning of words and phrases in an utterance require contextual information to understand the meaning. Deictic words are bound to the context linguistically or extra-linguistically. There are five deictic categories identified in literature: personal deixis, spatial deixis, temporal deixis, social deixis and discourse deixis. Personal deixis or person deixis deals with the correct identification of the grammatical persons used to refer to the speaker, addressee or any other person or an animal. Personal deixis is mainly focused on pronouns. First and second person pronouns typically refer to the speaker and hearer of the speech context, whereas third person pronouns refer to the non-speech or narrated participant. This research was focused to find how to identify personal deixis in Hindi and Sinhala languages with special reference to the use of pronouns. Hence, first person, second person and third person pronouns are considered as the limitation of the study. Research questions of this research were who are referred by the pronouns used in an utterance in Hindi and Sinhala, how much occurrences are made when the pronouns change with the use of cases and how the deictic meaning of a pronoun is conferred in an utterance? This comparative study is based on personal findings about deictic meanings and literature review based on personal deixis and the use of pronouns in Hindi and Sinhala languages. It was discovered through the research that the pronouns which refer to personal deixis and the pronouns used to refer to proximal and distant human or non-human beings are higher in number in Sinhala in comparison with Hindi because of diglossia, which means the use of two varieties of the same language for speaking and writing. In contrary, number of occurrences which are made when the pronouns change with the use of cases are higher in Hindi than Sinhala. In addition, the use of pronouns which connote honor, disrespect and equal status is evident in both Hindi and Sinhala and their number is higher in Sinhala than in Hindi. These deictic differences in Hindi and Sinhala languages must be taken into consideration in utterances as well as Hindi to Sinhala and vice versa translations. Adaptation or the use of proper nouns can be suitable in occasions where the meaning becomes ambiguous when using pronouns. This research can be useful for Sinhala learners of Hindi and Hindi learners of Sinhala to identify the differences of personal deixis of Hindi and Sinhala languages. Moreover, understanding of deictic differences can be useful in Hindi to Sinhala and vice versa translations.