[b-hebrew] We and us
B. M. Rocine
brocine at twcny.rr.com
Wed Nov 15 16:19:35 EST 2006
Hi David,
So I think we have found at least one 2nd person polite pronoun in BH.
;-) Correct me if I am wrong. Let's just talk about this one example
for the moment.
BH 2nd person polite pronoun is the cliticized pronoun _yod_ when
prefixed to the yiqtol form *when standing for the notion 2ms* (i.e. the
polite yishma` instead of the notionally "correct" tishma` as an
expression of social distance).
Of course the next question is whether a combination of clitic polite
pronouns and stand-alone polite pronouns is attested
cross-linguistically. Maybe not. But maybe we have found something
close enough to satisfy the constraints of innate human language capability.
Shalom,
Bryan
David Kummerow wrote:
> Hi Bryan,
>
> Just a clarification of what you say below: it is not just that there
> needs to be 2nd and/or 3rd person CONTRASTS, but we should expect there
> to be 2nd and/or third person grammaticalised polite PRONOUNS. It is an
> important difference, I think. This is at the heart of the matter with
> my difference of opinion with Peter.
>
> Regards,
> David Kummerow.
>
>> Hi Vadim,
>>
>> Interesting. Does "May *he* (the king) hear his slave" also exist?
>>
>> I am sure you are right about the avoidance issue (which is btw,
>> politeness). We're not really searching for politeness at this point
>> in our discussion.
>>
>> David has informed us that the 'ani/'anoki contrast is not best
>> understood as a politeness thing. His evidence is that such a
>> contrast needs, if cross-linguistic types have anything to say about
>> it, 3rd and 2nd person contrasts as a priority to the 1st person. I
>> have just been wandering around in the BH corpus looking for 2nd
>> and/or 3rd person politeness contrasts.
>>
>> Shalom,
>> Bryan
>>
>>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> b-hebrew mailing list
> b-hebrew at lists.ibiblio.org
> http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/b-hebrew
>
--
B. M. Rocine
Living Word Church
6101 Court St. Rd.
Syracuse, NY 13026
(W): 315.437.6744
More information about the b-hebrew
mailing list