Deixis System in English and the Bajhangi Dialect of Nepali

Abstract

The present thesis entitled "Deixis System in English and the Bajhangi Dialect of Nepali" has been conducted in order to find out Bajhangi deictic expressions in terms of person, time and place and to compare English and Bajhangi deictic expressions. I used both primary and secondary sources of data in order to conduct the research. The sampled population for the primary data were eighty native speakers of the Bajhangi 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 Bajhangi has a complex deixis system due to the existence of honorific distinction, number distinction, case distinction, proximal and distal distinction, gender distinction, affixation, etc. Bajhangi second and third person deictic terms have honorific and non-honorific distinction. Bajhangi 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, pure and impure distinction regarding Bajhangi time and place deictic expressions. This thesis consists of four chapters. The first chapter deals with the introduction of the study. It consists of definitions of language, multilingual setting of Nepal, introduction to the Bajhangi 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 procedure, 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 Bajhangi deixis systems. The fourth chapter includes the findings and recommendations of the research work.