Deixis, Grammar, and Culture

Download or read book Deixis, Grammar, and Culture written by Revere D. Perkins and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 1992-12-01 with total page 255 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Many linguists have believed that there is no connection between culture and language structures. This study reviews some of the literature supporting vocabulary connections, hypotheses for other connections, and critical views of this type of hypothesis. Precisely such a connection is developed employing a functional view of language and grammaticization principles. Using a world-wide probability sample of forty-nine languages, an association between culture and the grammatical coding of deictics is tested and statistically found to be corroborated to a very significant extent. Suggestions are included on how some of the concepts used and developed in this study might be extended.