The versatile nature of the Southern Sotho demonstrative

With this article I aim at illustrating the versatile nature of the Southern Sotho demonstrative. It will be shown that many domains of ihe discourse can be elucidated by observing how Southern Sotho speakers use this deictic expression in everyday discourses. A brief introduction will expound the nature of deixis—a concept which originated from Greek traditional studies, and later found its way into the study of modern linguistics. Deixis is generally studied under five headings, namely person deixis, place deixis, time deixis, discourse deixis and social deixis. In this article I confine myself to certain aspects of place deixis and how they influence discourse deixis. Alternative terms like local deixis and spatial deixis are used freely in stead of place deixis.