Deixis System in Kham Magar and English

Abstract

The study entitled 'Deixis System in Kham Magar and English' has been carried out to find out Kham person, time and place deictic expressions and also to compare them with those of English. I used both primary and secondary sources of data. I selected fifty native speaker of Kham as sampling population using purposive sampling procedure. An interview schedule was prepared as a tool of data collection. English deictic expressions were taken from secondary sources. The data were analyzed, interpreted and presented descriptively and statistically using tables and illustrations. The major findings of this research clarify that Kham has a complex deixis system due to the existence of number distinction, case distinction, proximal and distal distinction, affixation etc. English third person deictic expressions have different terms he, she and it to refer to the human and non-human whereas Kham has the same terms āu and nau. And, there is proximal and distal distinction in Kham third person deictic expressions which is not found in English. In English second person deictic expressions, you is used for singular and plural numbers but in Kham na and je are used. Regarding English place deictic expressions, there is proximal, distal and neutral distinction in contrast, proximal, intermediate, distal and neutral distinction is found in Kham. This thesis consists of four chapters. The first chapter includes introduction of the study which consists of general background, multilingual scenario of Nepal, contrastive analysis, pragmatics, introduction of deixis, literature review, significant of the study, objective of the study. The second chapter deals with methodology that consists of sources of data, sampling procedure, research tool, process of data collection and limitations of the study. Third chapter mentions analysis, interpretation and presentation of the collected data along with comparison of Kham and English deixis systems. The fourth chapter includes the findings and recommendation.