"Deixis" is defined by the SIL linguistics glossary as a "reference by means of an expression whose interpretation is relative to the (usually) extralinguistic context of the utterance, such as who is speaking, the time or place of speaking, the gestures of the speaker, or the current location in the discourse." The default deixis of Asha'ille is not unusual. The speaker is the center, the one who uses en'i self; the time is the present.
However, when telling a story it is very common for the deixis to be shifted to make a different person the grammatical first person. Typically, the main character of a story becomes central and all others become relative to that character. To mark the change in deixis, any or all of the following may be employed:
- ayana
- changes subjects used in the story
- neyane
- changes objects used in the story
- keyanu
- changes time of the story
The basic pattern for usage is:
- ayana ne <ring> jho <person> [, t'ne <ring> jho <person>...]
- neyane ne <object> [, t'ne <object>...]
- keyanu ne <time>
