| Abstract [eng] |
Ælfric was an Anglo-Saxon monk and a well-known writer of religious literature. The author is remembered not only for his Catholic Homilies (990-993) but also for his translations of the Holy Scriptures. His Catholic Homilies, based on the writings of the Church Fathers, are a series of extant preaching texts in Anglo-Saxon England. Deictic elements seem to be neglected in the monk’s sermons and only several articles are written about the phenomenon of deixis in Old English. Thus, Ælfric’s Catholic Homilies serve as a perfect means of investigating deictic expressions in Old English. The search for deictic pronouns, verbs and adverbs in the selection of Ælfric’s Catholic Homilies has been assisted by excessive use of Benjamin Thorpe’s English translation (1844). The context of sermons lets us determine and decipher the meaning of deictic expressions which change in distinct contexts with the speaker’s position either in time or space. The aim of the research is to analyze distinct types of deictic categories in Ælfric’s sermons. The tasks of the research are to introduce deixis and its elements as well as to analyze the deictic forms in Ælfric’s Catholic Homilies. The article uses the framework of deixis proposed by Stephen Levinson (1983) as well as a pragmatic approach for the analysis of distinct types of deictic expressions in Ælfric’s sermons. Ælfric’s Catholic Homilies contain the deictic expressions such as person, place, time, and discourse. These expressions implicate distinct meanings which depend solely on the context. Moreover, deictic expressions as well as the predication clearly show the proximity or distance of the speaker to the referred object. Person deixis is illustrated by the first person pronoun ic, the second person þu, and the third person he. Temporal deictic elements are expressed in time adverbial like now, whilst place deictic items unveil speaker’s distance from a place, which is achieved with the help of demonstratives such as these/those. Place adverbs are accomplished by the use of here (proximal) and there (distal). Place-deictic words ðisum (this) and þæt (that) refer to portions of the discourse. As far as tense is concerned, it is a temporal deictic device. In Ælfric’s Catholic Homilies, the present tense is the proximal form, whereas the past tense is the distal form. |
