deic-tic (dike' tick). adj. 1. (Logic) proving directly. 2. (Gram.) specifying identity or spatial or temporal location from the perspective of one or more of the participants in an act of speech or writing, in the context of either an external situation or the surrounding discourse. -- n. 3. (Gram.) a deictic element. [1820-30; < Gk deiktikos, demonstrative, equiv. to deiktos, able to be proved, v. adj. of deiknynai, to show, prove, point + -ikos -ic].In his thesis, Phil Agre used the word "deictic" to replace what he had been calling "indexical-functional" [1]. His first published use of it in this way was his paper with David Chapman in 1990 [2]. "Deictic" has been used in English for over a hundred years for pronouns that "point to" something (e.g., this, these, that, me). Agre used it to describe characterizations that indicate something without giving it a permanent name, where that something stands in a particular functional relationship to the speaker.
In our work, navigational targets are deictic since the operator points to them as targets.
[1] Philip Edward Agre. The dynamic structure of everyday life. MIT, 1988. MIT AI Lab Memo 1085. Ph.D. Thesis.
[2] Philip E. Agre and David Chapman. "What are plans for?". Robotics and Autonomous Systems, 6(1/2):17-34, 1990.
Source last updated 7 May 03. Content last updated 980605