A linguistic-pragmatic analysis of cat-induced deixis in cat-human interactions.

The present paper contributes to the emerging field of embodied interaction. It reports on research into deictic interactions between a human and a non-human, specifically a cat, interlocutor, applying a pragmatic framework developed for human–human communicative interactions. We analyse video recordings of interactions where a cat is a deictic agent pointing the human interlocutor either to the door or the food bowl. We show that these interactions show triadic pointing, hence, focusing joint attention on a common object as a proxy for the event i.e., providing food in the bowl and opening the door. We show that the cat also checks whether the human understands her intentions and that she confirms the human's interpretation. We do not restrict ourselves to vocal communication - as is often done in human language studies -, but we examine how in cat-human communication the cat and human bodies are used to express deixis. Thus, we conceptualize deixis as an embodied interpersonal i.e., interspecies phenomenon. We show that the cat interlocutor uses her body, e.g. eyes/body/tail/ears, as well as her voice, meowing/purring, within this complex deictic interaction. • The present paper investigates the contribution of the non-human feline interlocutor as a deictic agent in interspecies human/non-human interaction. • Our analysis successfully applies a pragmatic framework developed for human–human communicative interactions, to intraspecies instances of human-non-human interaction. • We show that the body emerges as the crucial locus of deixis, which in turn entails that one (and perhaps the only) prerequisite to. • The specific expression of deixis depends on the kind of body possessed by the deictic agent: There are aspects of "human deixis" that cats cannot express, and vice versa. • Deictic communication of cats includes eye gaze, and possibly positioning of the ears and the instrumental use of the paw. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]