the words that make it up, but must interpret of the contents of the whole sentence. For example, in the sentence the area was safe and under
control. As is known, if the word ‘safe’ stand alone, so its meaning is free from danger; freedom from interference. However, with the appearance of
the ‘control’ word in units of the sentence, finally it eclipse of the ‘safe’ word. The point is that area is not really ‘safe’ because there is the control
word.
15
The benefit from semantics study is depend on type of work being taken by people in their everyday tasks. For a journalist, a reporter, or the people
who involved in the world of newspapers will get practical benefit from the knowledge of semantics. Semantics knowledge will make people easier to
choose and use a word with appropriate meaning in conveying the information to society.
B. English Pronoun and Deictic
English pronoun is member of small class of words in English language which used as replacements or substitutes for nouns and nouns phrases.
They have general reference, such as: I, you, he, this, who, what. A pronouns is a word which takes the place of noun. Pronouns can be one of
three cases: Subject, Object, or Possessive. There are some rules in English pronoun:
16
15
Mansoer Pateda, op. cit., p 71
16
Jane Starus, The Blue Book of Grammar and Punctuation,Tenth Edition; San fransisco: Jossey- Bass, pp. 6-8.
- Rule 1. Subject pronouns are used when the pronoun is the subject of
the sentence, such as I, you, he, she, it, we. Subject pronouns usually occur before a verb. For example: “You did the job.”
- Rule 2. Subject pronouns are used if they rename the subject. They
will follow to be verbs such as is, are, was, were, am, and will be. Examples: “It is he”, “This is she speaking”, “It is we who are
responsible for the decision to downsize ”.
- Rule 3. Object pronouns are used everywhere else direct object,
indirect object, object of the preposition, such as are me, you, him, her, it, us, and them. For exam
ple: “Jean talked to him”, “Are you talking to me?”
- Rule 4a. A strong clause can stand on its own. For example: She is
hungry, I am feeling well today. -
Rule 4b. A weak clause begins with words such as although, since, if, when, and because. Weak clauses ca
n’t stand on their own. For example: Although she is hungry..., If she is hungry..., Since I am
feeling well..., etc. -
Rule 4c. If a sentence contains more than one clause, isolate the clauses so that you can decide which pronoun is correct. For example:
Weak Strong, [Although she is hungry,] [she will give him some of her food.]; and [Although this gift is for him,] [I would like you to have it
too.]
- Rule 5. To decide whether to use the Subject or Object pronoun after
the words than or as, mentally complete the sentence. For example: Zoe is taller than Ime. Mentally completing the sentence, we have,
Zoe is taller than I am. Another example: Daniel would rather talk to her than Ime. We can mentally complete this sentence in two ways:
Daniel would rather talk to her than to me. OR Daniel would rather talk to her than I would. As mention in above, the meaning will change
depending on the pronoun we choose. -
Rule 6. Possessive pronouns show ownership and never need apostrophes. Possessive pronouns: mine, yours, his, hers, its, ours, and
theirs. In other side, the only time it’s has an apostrophe is when it is a contraction for it is or it has. For examples: It’s a cold morning; The
thermometer reached its highest reading. -
Rule 7. Possessive adjectives are my, your, his, her, its, our, their. It occurs before a noun my car or an adjective + noun my new car.
Possessive adjectives have no singular or plural. They are used with both singular and plural nouns my book, my books.
- Rule 8. Reflexive pronouns; myself, himself, herself, itself,
themselves, ourselves, yourself, yourselves; should be used only when they refer back to another word in the sentence.
Correct: I did it myself; Incorrect: My brother and myself did it. The word myself does not refer back to another word. So, the correct
one is: My brother and I did it.
Words or phrases that require contextual information to convey any meaning like, English pronouns
– are deictic. Deictic word is one which takes some element of its meaning from the context or situation of the
utterance. For example, the first person singular pronoun ‘I’ is deictic, when Dina says ‘I have lost my job’, the word I here refers to Dina.
17
Any linguistic form used to accomplish this ‘pointing’ is called a
deictic expression . Deictic expressions are also called indexicals. They
are among the first forms to be spoken by very young children and can be
used to indicate people via person deixis
‘me’, ‘you’, or location via
spatial deixis ‘here’, ‘there’, or time via temporal deixis ‘now’,
‘then’. When someone notice a strange object and ask, ‘what is that?’, heshe is using a deictic expression ‘that’ to indicate something in the
immediate context.
18
Deictics are not defined in terms other than that they depend on the pragmatic situation for the intended designation to be achieved.
Consequently, they may be independent lexical items such as ‘today’; member of small closed grammatical classes of forms such as ‘this’; or
inflectional affixes such as the pas tense marked ‘-ed’.
19
17
James R. Hurford, et. al, op.cit., p. 66.
18
George Yule, Pragmatics, New York: Oxford University Press, 1996, p. 9.
19
Revere D. Perkins, Deixis ,Grammar, and Culture, Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company, 1992, p.101.
C. Deixis 1. Definition of Deixis
