Semantic Significance of Indexicals in Syntax: A Comparative Study of English and Urdu Deixes

Abstract

The aim of this paper was to find out the relationship between semantics and syntax through pragmatic analysis of indexicals used by Ex-Prime Minister Imran Khan in two of his purposively selected speeches; one in Urdu delivered on 23^rd December, 2020 on the passing out ceremony of police officers and the other in English delivered on 27^th September, 2019 in UNGA. The English speech has been analyzed using antconc software while the analysis of Urdu speech has been done manually. A quantitative analysis of the five kinds of deixes in both the speeches strengthened the research results of  Samosir and Zainuddin (2013) by providing the proof of the fact that person deixis is the most dominant category of English deixes (45.5%) while spatial is the least dominant (5.1%). The analysis of Urdu speech revealed a similar pattern as the person deixis (51.9%) is the most frequent, spatial being the least (3.9%).  The presence of all five kinds of deixes with a similar pattern of relative frequencies in both the languages have provided a useful data for the purpose of Parallel Grammar (ParGram) project (Butt et al., 1999) to find out parallel structures in the grammar of six languages out of which two have been analyzed in this paper.