汉越人称指示语的相比研究 = A comparision of person deixis in Chinese and Vietnamese

Abstract

Person Deixis is one of the most important areas of linguistics in pragmatics because its usage is pervasive in everyday language. However, there is very little work done in comparing the person deixis between Chinese and Vietnamese. Researchers have not given adequate attention to considering address terms as a kind of person deixis. The comparison of person deixis between Chinese and Vietnamese will help fill this gap. After describing the two languagesa?? person deixis systems, this study will focus on comparing the differences between Chinese and Vietnamese person deixis. It also shows the roles played by address terms and personal pronouns in each language and analyses unusual uses of person deixis. I shall also discuss the various functions of person deixis, such as the social deitic function, and emotion expressed via person deixis, which are very different between the two languages. This study also shows that in the Chinese language, person deixis only indicates the role of each interlocutor in the speech event, but in the Vietnamese language, it provides much more information, for instance the relationship between interlocutors as well as the interlocutorsa?? relevant social position. In essence, the most significant difference between person deixis in Chinese and Vietnamese is that the latter uses address terms as person deixis. This research hopes to contribute to the theory of person deixis, considering address terms as an important part of person deixis.