Díctics espacials i gramàtica en narracions orals

Abstract

Deixis is a key phenomenon in language and communication. However, it has not been adequately described since it must be analysed by using real examples from corpora, which show a very interesting variety of uses. In this paper, space deictics are identified and classified in a corpus of oral narratives from the Corpus Audiovisual Plurilingüe (Multilingual Audiovisual Corpus). The analysis highlights seven uses: situational deixis, which refers to the space of communication,; text deixis, in which the deictic refers to the text as the location and is anaphorically related to a linguistic antecedent; deixis am Phantasma and presentational deixis, in which the space deictic does not refer to the utterance or the preceding or following text, but situates a concept within memory or shared knowledge. Three other uses can be distinguished, namely indefinite, expletive and grammaticalised. In these non-deictic uses the marker has no linguistic or extra-linguistic reference, but it simply occupies the slot of an unspecified expression or indicates a failure to specify any syntactic or discourse slot. The analysis shows that space deictics constitute a common and varied device in the construction of narratives and reveals the types of deictics characteristic of the grammar of spoken language.