120133 SE The pragmatics of spatio-temporal relations in language (2007W)

The course will address various problems resulting from the deictic anchoring of utterances, i.e. their spatio-temporal, textual and pragmatic coordinates, e.g.
a) the classical distinction of person, place and time deixis, pervasive in all language systems (illustrations from numerous languages will be discussed);
b) the textually-determined discourse deixis and its relation to anaphora;
c) the socio-pragmatically conditioned social and emotional deixis;
d) deictic vs. non-deictic categories
* "classical" deictic categories: personal pronouns and adverbs
* demonstrative pronoun systems in various languages
* verbs as deictic categories
e) deixis as a socio-cultural phenomenon determined by the socio-cultural variables
f) different conceptualizations of space in different language systems
g) the intercultural contrasts in social deixis (forms of address in Indo-European and non-Indo-European languages);