TIP of the day: Deixis

Yes, deixis is just a fancy linguistic term for something we use constantly. An example, "I love visiting there yesterday" has meaning only if you know the who is speaking "I", where they visited, and when they are speaking.

From Wikipedia:

[quote]In linguistics, deixis (/ˈdaɪksɨs/) refers to words and phrases that cannot be fully understood without additional contextual information. Words are deictic if their semantic meaning is fixed but their denotational meaning varies depending on time and/or place. Words or phrases that require contextual information to convey any meaning – for example, English pronouns – are deictic.

The most common forms of deixis deal with person, place and time. They are anchored to the deictic center (in texts, expand the idea of antecedents you learned in grade school).

From Wikipedia:

[quote]A deictic center, sometimes referred to as an origo, is a set of theoretical points that a deictic expression is ‘anchored’ to, such that the evaluation of the meaning of the expression leads one to the relevant point. As deictic expressions are frequently egocentric, the center often consists of the speaker at the time and place of the utterance, and additionally, the place in the discourse and relevant social factors. However, deictic expressions can also be used in such a way that the deictic center is transferred to other participants in the exchange, or to persons / places / etc. being described in a narrative

So how does this related to Logos?

Example 1:

A search for <Person Israelites> or <Person "Israelites (the Conquest)"> fins the they in Gen 15:16 because Logos applied the interpretative rules of deixis, to link "they" to the descendents of Abraham" to "the Israelites"

Example 2.

In the same verse, Logos equates the "here" to Canaan.

Example 3:

 In the same verse, Logos does not directly translate "fourth generation" into a time reference, but by identifying Abraham as the addressee we are provided with the same context as the original audience to "calculate" the time reference.

By connecting the deictic word to its anchor (antecedent) Logos has greatly expanded the Search capabilities. However, like all tagging, users need to decide for themselves if the tagging is the only possibility or if another reading is to be preferred.