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vocatives, which can be encoded in, for example, kinship terms, titles, and proper names and in combinations of these.
From Huang’s view, it can be concluded that person deixis relates to the identification of participants’ role in a speech event which is reflected in personal
pronouns specifically person, number and gender and in vocatives.
1. Personal Pronouns
Personal pronouns usually express person, number and gender. Personal pronouns generally show a distinction of first, second and third person. The category
first-person is the speaker’s reference to him- or herself. Second person is the encoding of the speaker’s reference to one or more addressees. Meanwhile, third
person refers to persons or entities which are neither speakers nor addressees in addressee exclusion.
Moreover, since languages vary greatly, it is important to form number systems. Two points are important to deliver regarding non-singular of first person. In
the first place, plural of first person does not mean the same as plural of third person. For example, in English, “we” does not mean plural speakers in the same way that
“they” means more than one third-person entity Levinson 1983: 69. Secondly, many of the world’s languages have two non-singular first-person pronouns, one meaning
“we-inclusive-of-addressee” and the other meaning “we-exclusive-of-addressee”. In addition, personal pronouns may also mark gender. In all languages with
pronominal gender marking, gender can be distinguished on third person, where
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commonly two that is masculine and feminine or three that is masculine, feminine and neuter genders may be identified; in some, gender assignment can also be for
second person; in a few, gender can be marked on first person as well. In conclusion, person deixis may not be separated with participant-roles
which include personal pronouns consisting of pronouns, number and gender. Pronouns relate to speaker’s reference or whether heshe refers to himherself, the
addressee or none of them. Meanwhile, number and gender are also included. Number is important to distinguish person’s singular and plural forms, while the
personal persons will be useful to classify the gender.
2. Vocatives
Person deixis can also be accomplished by vocatives. Vocatives are noun phrases that refer to the addressee, but form no part of the arguments of a predicate.
Prosodically, they are separated from the body of an utterance that may accompany them Huang, 2007: 143. In short, vocatives relate to noun phrase which function to
address to the addressee and they hence can stand separately from their utterance. To sum up, person deixis has something to do with vocatives as well since the
vocatives focus on the addressee or someone whom the speaker talks to. More details about vocatives will be explained in part E of this chapter.
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E. Vocatives
