Deixis

Deixis is introduced to handle the 'orientational' features of language which are relative to the time and place of utterance.

Examples

(i) personal pronouns: I, you, he, etc.

(ii) adverbials of place and time: here, there; now, then

Origin

Deixis is merely the Greek word for 'pointing' or 'indicating'.

Other languages

German Deixis (de) Chinese 指示语

Reference

Lyons, John. 1968. Introduction to Theoretical Linguistics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.