Deixis System in Baitadeli and English

Abstract

The present thesis entitled "Deixis system in Baitadeli and English " has been conducted in order to find out Baitadeli deictic expressions in terms of person, place and time and to compare English and Baitadeli deictic expressions. I used both primary and secondary sources of data in order to conduct the research. The sampled populations for primary data were one hundred and twenty native speakers of the Baitadeli dialect who were selected 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 by using tables and illustrations. The major findings of this research clarify that Baitadeli has a complex deixis system due to the existence of honorific distinction, number distinction, case distinction, proximal distal distinction, gender distinction, affixation, etc. Baitadeli second and third person deictic expressions have honorific and non-honorific distinction. Baitadeli first, second and third person deictic expressions have different terms for singular and plural numbers and subjective, objective and genitive cases. There have been found proximal and distal distinction, gestural and non-gestural distinction regarding Baitadeli place and time deictic expressions. This thesis consists of four chapters. The first chapter deals with the introduction of the study. It consists of definition of language, multilingual setting of Nepal, introduction to Baitadeli dialect, contrastive analysis, introduction to deixis, literature review, objectives of the study and significance of the study. The second chapter deals with the methodology that consists of sources of data, sampling process, research tool, process of data collection and limitations of the study. The third chapter is the body of the thesis. It is concerned with analysis, interpretation and presentation of the collected data along with comparison of English and Baitadeli deixis systems. The fourth chapter includes the findings and recommendations of the research work.