Adpositions, deixis, and anti-deixis

Alan Reed Libert

pp. 489-516

in: Alessandro Capone, Jacob L. Mey (eds), Interdisciplinary studies in pragmatics, culture and society, Berlin, Springer, 2016

Abstract

In this chapter, I look at the role of adpositions in deixis, specifically in spatial and temporal deixis. There may be more controversy with respect to this word class than with, e.g., demonstratives: there are some who would say that deictic adpositions do not exist (at least in a particular language), and among those who say that they do exist, there may be disagreement as to which adpositions are deictic. After examining several spatial adpositions, I discuss anti-deixis; some adpositions in some contexts appear to be anti-deictic, that is, they point to locations which are not the same as that of the speech situation (which is different from being far from the speech situation, i.e., distal). I then discuss some temporal adpositions which may be deictic or anti-deictic. On closer examination, it turns out that the anti-deictic effects observed may not always be due to the adpositions involved. In any case, anti-deixis is a complex phenomenon worth exploring further.