Spatial Deictic Expressions in English and Chhintang

Abstract

This thesis entitled 'Spatial Deictic Expressions in English and Chhintang’ aimed to find out Chhintang spatial deictic expressions, compare and contrast them with those of English. The researcher collected data from both primary and secondary sources. Eighty two native speakers above the age of 15 years of the Chhintang Rai language are the primary sources of the data and the different books, journals, magazines and theses are the secondary sources of data. The informants for this study have been selected from the both Mulgaun and Sambugaun dialects of the Chhintang language to elicit the Chhintang spatial deictic expressions. I used the judgmental sampling procedure to sample the population. Interview was used as a research tool for data collection. The major findings of the study are: Chhintang has two general deictic demonstrative roots proximal ‘ba/bago’ and remote ‘huĩ/huŋgo’ from which local deictic adverbs proximal ‘baiʔ/bagoiʔ/be’ and remote ‘huŋgoiʔ/be’ are derived with neutral locative marker ‘-i/-iʔ/-be/-beʔ/. ‘to’, ‘mo’ and ‘yo’ are altitudinal demonstratives for remote up, down and across respectively. ‘-tu’, ‘-mu’ ‘-yu’ are locative markers for up, down and across respectively. ‘-lam’,‘-ni’, ‘-ŋa’ are meditative, directive and ablative case markers respectively. Chhintang has two deictic verbs ‘come’ and ‘bring’. Chhintang uses some spatial postpositions as spatial deictic.

The thesis consists of four chapters. The first chapter deals with general background, an introduction to the Chhintang language, need and importance of contrastive analysis, review of the related literature, objectives and significance of the study. The second chapter deals with methodology adopted for the study under which the sources of data, collection, process of data collection and population of the study and limitations of the study are mentioned. Similarly, the third chapter deals with the analysis and interpretation of the data. The last chapter deals with some recommendations made on the basis of findings of the study and references and appedixes are included in the final part of this study.