1. 1
Synopsis
Translation of Urdu and English Deixis:
A Contrastive Analysis
Prepared by: Sidra Iqbal (10050702-001)
Supervised by: Muhammad Athar Khurshid
University of Gujrat,
Department of English

2. 2
Introduction
Words in a sentence stay as lexical and grammatical categories. Lexical categories mean the
content words of a language, while grammatical categories are the function words. Deictic
expressions are found in both but mostly in grammatical categories. Grammatical categories
include the notion of Deixis, the referring expressions of a language without a fixed referent.
Mostly, they are the person time, and place related expressions (Levinson,1983). It may be useful
to make a list of such expressions in Urdu and English languages and see which might be
facilitating, or obstructing in the second language learning. Therefore, the concern of this study
is to see how English and Urdu languages display their respective deictic properties.
What is Deixis?
An utterance derives much of its meaning from different grammatical features of language.
These features play a very important role in understanding the context of the utterance. Deixis is
such feature. It consists of referring expressions, used for referring to objects inside or outside of
the text. E.g.
You‟ll have to bring that back tomorrow, because they aren‟t here now.
The above sentence and many other sentences like this are highly context-based. There
are different expressions in this sentence which are referring to the objects inside and outside the
text. These expressions are called deixis, an important aspect of pragmatics. All natural
languages have these pointing expressions in them. Deixis has always been very important topic
of research in semantics and pragmatics.
The need of contrastive analysis of Urdu and English deictic expressions
Pakistan is a country where many languages are spoken in different communities. Urdu is the
lingua franca, and English is the official language. For this both the languages are taught as
compulsory subjects at school and college level. Because of the extensive use of both the
languages in Pakistani society, the practice of using mixed code (English mixed in Urdu) has
become a common phenomenon. It may be useful from the pedagogic point of view to know
which deictic expressions in both the languages are facilitating and which expressions are
obstructing. As a first step towards the goal, a detailed list of the maximum deictic expressions in
both the languages can be prepared. The items on both lists can be classified according to their
mutual translinguistic compatibility. Some of the expressions in both languages may have
unmatchable semantic roles; others may have differing distributions of their respective sentence
structures. The knowledge of their mutual differences may be helpful in making the mind of the
confused learners clear, who happen to commit errors in the use of English deictic expressions.

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Theoretical background
Deixis in English
The reference of many words and expressions relies on the context of the situation of the
utterance as well as the time and place in all languages. This aspect of pragmatics is known as
“Deixis”. This is the technical term derived from Greek for one the most important features.
Deixis is the basic way of establishing the relationship between the utterance and its context. Its
meaning are “indicating” or “pointing”.
This term is borrowed from Greek and is used for demonstrative, first and second person
pronouns, tense, specific time and place adverbs like “now” and “here”, and a variety of other
grammatical features which are directly involved in the context of the utterance.
Levinson (1983) describes that deixis includes;
 Personal and possessive pronouns(I , my, mine, yours)
 Demonstrative pronouns (this, that)
 Spatial and temporal adverbs ( here, there, now, then)
 Articles (the)
Two major types of deixis:
a) Anaphoric deixis: this is used to refer to backward in the sentence. Example are
demonstrative pronouns,
“Such”, “said”, “given” etc.
b) Cataphoric deixis: this is referring to forward. Example are;
“the following”, certain”, “this (let me say this)”, etc.
Deixis is such linguistics feature that is bound to the context of the speaker as well as the . These
expressions have their basic function and impact in face-to-face interaction, where utterances
such as following can be easily understood by the hearer.
E.g. “I will put this here.”
Now the detail of deixis is being given.
i. Person deixis
Person deixis concerns the utterance of the speaker. It is the encoding of the role of the
participants in the speech in which the utterance is delieverd.These deixes are further divided
into three categories, namely “first person”, “second person” and “third person”. The deixis,
used for “first person” are the grammaticalization of speaker‟s reference to himself/herself.
The “second person” category refers to the speaker‟s reference to one or more addressees, and
the “third person” is the indication of the persons or entities which are neither the speaker nor
the addressee.

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ii. Spatial deixis
Space or place deixis tells the way in which the place or space of the utterance is being
specified. As every utterance is delivered in any specific place. Spatial deixis are used to
specify that particular and relative location. English makes use of only two spatial adverbs
like “here” and “there” but in some older texts, a much larger set of spatial deictic
expressions can be found. E.g. “younder”(more distant from speaker), “thither”(to that
place) and “thence”(from that place).
One thing is to be noted in spatial deixis that the location or the place from the speaker‟s
perspective can be sometimes fixed mentally as well as physically (Levinson,1983) . For
instance, speakers away from their home place will continue to use “here” to refer to their
home place, though they will be physically distant from their homes. And sometimes they
(the speakers) will project themselves in some other location before being there. E.g. “I‟ll
come there later”( going towards the addressee‟s location).
iii. Temporal deixis
As it has been mentioned above that every utterance is delivered in a specific place, same
like that every utterance is delivering a particular time period. This time specification is told
through the temporal deixis. These are concerned with the time adverbs.
These are also true with the following deictic expressions such as;
 Yesterday
 Tomorrow
 Today
 Tonight
 Next week etc.
Now like all other deictic expressions this temporal deixis also depends on knowing the
relevant time for the understanding of the utterance.
iv. Social deixis
Social deixis are used for the social information or the interaction with the society. This
includes the social status and familiarity with each other. In English there are two major
forms of social deixis as follows;
T-V distinction:
Honorifics
T-V distinction.
These are basically two versions of formality and informality of “you” forms of social
deixis. The diverse usage of these expressions indicates the formality or informality of
the speaker towards the addressee.
Honorifics:

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This notion is much complex than t-v distinction, though they deliver the same social
information but they can involve different words being based on the status of the interact
ants.
v. Discourse deixis
These deictic expressions deal with the expressions that refer to the different portions of
the text itself. They tell the utterance‟s relation to the surrounding text.
Deixis in Urdu (Wikipedia, n.d.)
First person Second person Third person
Singul
ar (i)
Plural
(you)
Formal
(you)
Informal
(you)
Very
informal
(thou)
Singula
r
(this)
Plural
(these)
Singula
r
(that)
Plural
(those)
‫ںیم‬
Mein
‫مہ‬
Hum
‫آپ‬
ap
‫مت‬
Tum
‫وت‬
Tu
‫ہی‬
Yeh
‫ہی‬
Ye/eh
‫وہ‬
voh
‫وہ‬
Vo/oh
‫ےھجم‬
Mujey
‫ںیمہ‬
humen
‫آپ‬
apko
‫ں‬‫ہی‬‫م‬ُ‫ت‬
Tumen
‫ے‬‫ھ‬‫ج‬ُ‫ت‬
Tuje
ِ‫ا‬‫ےس‬
Isse
ِ‫ا‬‫ںیہن‬
inhen
‫ُےس‬‫ا‬
usse
‫ُںیہن‬‫ا‬
Unhen
‫ےھجم‬
Mujh
‫مہ‬
Hum
‫آپ‬
ap
‫مت‬
tum
‫ےھجت‬
tujh
ِ‫ا‬‫س‬
Is
‫ن‬‫ا‬
in
‫ُس‬‫ا‬
us
‫ُن‬‫ا‬
Un
‫ریما‬
Mera
‫ارا‬ ‫م‬‫ہ‬
Hamara
‫اک‬‫آپ‬
apka
‫اہمترا‬
Tumara
‫ریتا‬
Tera
‫اک‬‫س‬‫ا‬
Iska
‫اک‬‫ن‬‫ا‬
inka
‫اک‬‫ُس‬‫ا‬
uska
‫اک‬‫ُن‬‫ا‬
Unka
A few Urdu deitic expressions have been explained below:
 ‫آپ‬/ āp
This form is used very often among Urdu speakers. It shows respect for the addressee. People
use this form even with the strangers to give them respect.In many families this form of first
person is used even for the young members of the family. The plural form of “ap” can be used as
“ap log” (“you people”) and “ap sub” (“you all”).

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 Tum (‫)مت‬
This is informal version of “ap”, used for some familiarity with the addressee. This form of urdu
deixis does not have any difference between its singular form and plural form. The problem here
is that it could not make difference either the addressee is the one person or more than one. This
is commonly used for the addressee, younger than the speaker and mostly used at home. The one
way of differentiating among the singular and plural is calling “(tum) ‫مت‬ (“tum log”) ‫ولگ‬‫.مت‬
 Tu (ُِ ُ‫)ت‬
This form shows very much frankness and closeness of the speaker to the addressee. This is used
between friends, very much familiar to one another. Its plural form is also very difficult to make.
This form is mostly used for personal relationship with a person. But this is also used in movies
between the killers or criminals.
Contrastive analysis
Contrastive analysis is the systematic study of a pair of languages with a view to identify their
structural differences and similarities. It means the comparison of two languages by paying
attention to differences and similarities between languages being compared. It was first
suggested by Whorf (1941) as “contrastive linguistics”, a comparative study which emphasizes
on analyzing the structural differences and similarities as well.
After some period of time this term contrastive analysis was redefined as sub discipline of
linguistics, concerned with the comparison of two or more languages or subsystems of languages
in order to check the linguistics differences and similarities. As well as this study is concerned,
contrastive analysis will be done of two languages namely, English and Urdu. What is different
about this study is that only the structure of the referring expressions of both languages will be
analyzed.
Objective
 To record the semantic and syntactic differences and similarities of Urdu and English
deitic expressions.
Research question
 Which deictic expressions of English and Urdu are synonymous?
 How many are synonymous, and how many are not?
 What alternatives are used in the absence of a compatible deictic expression in each
language?
 Do the deictic expressions of both the languages project similar or different properties
onto the structure of sentence?

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Literature review
Much work has been done in this field in other languages. “Deixis are those words in a language
that entirely depend on context (Fromkin et. al., 1991).” Methven A. (2006) quotes Wei (2001)
who says “meaning of a deictic term cannot be completely understood by knowing the context
alone. Cultural connotations of a particular term also have to be understood. Buhler (1934/1990)
uses this term “Deixis” for the first time to show its pointing function in an analysis of language.
Lyons (1977) says that text depends contextually on the deictic expressions.It is not uncommon
that the meaning of a deictic term cannot be understood by having the knowledge of context
only. It is not easy to translate the deictic expressions from one language to another because
there are many restrictions to transfer the context of an utterance.”
The similarities and differences of deixis in English and Arabic languages have been
worked out by Semlali (2006) He concludes that it is quite different to use the deictic words of
one language into another because they have quite different usage patterns in their own language
systems. English is two term system while on the other hand Arabic is three term system. The
subject pronoun system of the two languages is greatly different. English is a five person system
while on the other hand, Arabic is different from it and have eight person system (Semlali,
2006).
Another work has been done on deixis in Chinese language. “There are many problems
encountered when translating deitic terms between English and Chinese” (Methven, 2006). “In
some cases there are a greater number of deictic terms in Chinese. For example, „I‟ in English
has two possible translations in Chinese; and on the other hand certain expressions in English
have no alternatives in Chinese. For example Chinese has no definite and indefinite articles, the
and a respectively” (Xiong, 2001). He also points out the contrast between the repetition of
pronouns in English and their omission in Chinese. There are some important differences in
English and Chinese deictic expressions, for instance English includes subject and object
personal pronouns (Swan, 1995), whereas Chinese does not have these.
Therefore in many English translations, the appropriate deictic terms and articles have to
be added. Chinese is different from English in the way information is presented, that is, the order
of information. In English, some time information is placed in front of the sentence, while in
Chinese this practice is reversed. For example, 14 May 2012 would be written in reverse order in
Chinese language as: 2012, May 14. (Methven 2006). In modern Chinese, plural personal
pronouns are made by adding bound morpheme_men in single personal pronoun (Li &
Thompson), so Chinese has two translations of we that are women and zanmen.

8. 8
Methodology
Since the present research aims at exploring certain possibilities in the area of Deictic Expression
Translation, and later, presenting them in a systematic order, it may be categorized as instance of
the Exploratory and Descriptive research. Both the qualitative and quantitative approaches will
be adopted in this work. This is because the former naturally agrees with this type of research.
The latter may be needed to point out frequency of occurrences.
The technique of comparison adapted from Contrastive Analysis Hypothesis. Lado‟s
model of Contrastive Analysis (1957) as quoted by Ellis (1994)is given below. In addition to
this, the features of expressions may also be compared on the basis of their distribution in the
syntax of their respective languages.
The process of comparison here is based on the procedures that are drawn by Lado (1957) who
states:
"we begin with an analysis of the foreign language and compare its structure by
structure with the native language. For each structure we need to know if there is
a structure in the native language (1) signalled the same way, that is, by the some
formal device, (2) having the same meaning, and similarly distributed in the
system of that language."
Data Collection
For the collection of data, an Urdu short story „Overcoat‟ by Ghullam Abbas and its English
version (the one available in the Punjab Textbook Board‟s published book of English for 11th
grade) have been taken up for the initial comparison of deictic expressions.

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Lado’s model of Contrastive Analysis (1957)
Type of difficulty L1: English Example
L2: Spanish
x
1. Split x 'for' is either por or para
y
2. New o..............o grammatical gender
3. Absent x..............o 'do' as a tense carrier
4. Coalesced x
x 'his/her' is realized as a single
y form su.
5. Correspondence x..............x -ing, -ndo as complement with
verbs of Perception, e.g.
'I saw the men running';
vi a los hombres comenendo
Analysis
The deictic expressions picked up from the short story „Overcoat‟ will be analyzed according to
the abovementioned table. Moreover, the syntactic possibilities may also be considered.
Conclusion
The summary of the findings, and possible suggestions.

10. 10
References
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Ellis, R. (1994). The Study of Second Language Acquisition. Oxford University Press, Hong
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Griffiths, P. (2006). An Introduction to English Semantics and Pragmatics. Edinburgh:
Edinburgh University Press.
Huang, Y. (2007). Pragmatics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Levinson, S. (1983). Pragmatics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Lyons, J. (1977, August 01). Semantics: vol:1. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Lyons, J. (1977, October 27). Semantics: vol:2. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
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Semlali, H. (2006). Translating Deixis A Subjective Experience. A Ph.D Dissertation. University
of Edinburgh: Edinberg.
Swan, M. (1995). Practical English usage. Oxford university press.
Xiong, Q. (2001). Comparison of English and Chinese deixis and their translation (in Chinese).
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Yule, G. (1985). The Study of Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Yule, G. (1996). Pragmatics: Oxford introduction to language study. Oxford: Oxford University
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Wikipedia. (n.d.). Urdu Pronouns. Retrieved from http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Urdu/Pronouns,
on 2:25.