aanduidingswerkwoord

Aanduidingswerkwoord is a term used in some branches of linguistics, particularly within Dutch-language research, to describe a class of verbs whose primary role is to encode deixis. Deixis concerns the way a statement relates to the spatial, temporal, or social context of the utterance. An aanduidingswerkwoord thus helps locate the event or state with respect to the speaker, the addressee, or the surrounding discourse, rather than providing the core verbal meaning of an action or relation.

The category is not part of a universally standardized grammar; its exact status varies by theoretical framework. In some accounts it is treated as a distinct functional category, sometimes as a subtype of auxiliary verbs or as a head that combines with a main verb to supply deictic information. In others, the notion is used more loosely as a descriptive label for certain deictic-within-predicate phenomena. Because of this variation, the term does not have one fixed set of diagnostic properties.

In practice, research on aanduidingswerkwoorden is typically found in discussions of deixis, reference, and cross-linguistic verb systems. They are discussed mainly to illustrate how languages mark the speaker’s or discourse context at the level of the predicate, and to contrast with more overt deictic markers such as demonstratives or adverbs. Related topics include deixis, demonstratives, and auxiliary verbs, as well as the broader study of predicate structure.