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b-hebrew - Re: [b-hebrew] We and us

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  • From: Peter Kirk <peter AT qaya.org>
  • To: David Kummerow <farmerjoeblo AT hotmail.com>
  • Cc: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] We and us
  • Date: Tue, 14 Nov 2006 22:50:59 +0000

On 14/11/2006 21:21, David Kummerow wrote:
...

Note that I was referring to the grammaticalisation of first-person pronouns. Lexical items denoting "servant" and "slave" etc can be the source of polite first-person pronouns. But I hardly see how English "your humble servant" is a grammaticalised polite first-person pronoun. The same thing could be happening in the Turkish dialect you mention, but you would need to supply me with further details. ...

It is not a dialect but a separate language, related to Turkish, and the national language of an independent country. For various reasons I don't want to specify further. But in both Turkish and in this language the word "bende" meaning "slave" in Turkish, and the same word in a slightly different form in the other language, are sometimes used with second or third person possessive suffixes (rather like the Hebrew ones) as some kind of substitute for the first person pronoun, in fact exactly as `ABDEKA is used in Hebrew. If Turkish counts as an example for Helmbrecht's study, why doesn't Hebrew?

... Helmbrecht's implicational hierarchy of the grammaticalisation of politeness distinctions in pronouns would hypothesis that for English "your humble servant" to grammaticalise into a pronoun, a grammaticalised politeness distinction would need to be operable in the second- and third-person. Since this is not the case, "your humble servant" is hypothesised to remain a noun phrase.

According to what criteria does Helmbrecht judhe Turkish "bendeniz" to be "grammaticalisation" but, I presume, Hebrew `ABDEKA and English "your humble servant" not to be? If the criterion is that there is also a second or third person politeness distinction, then the argument is circular.

Later you further explained to Bryan:
... That English "your humble servant" HASN'T grammaticalised into a first-person pronoun could even be taken in support of my claims. Why hasn't it grammaticalised? The answer from typological research is that English would need polite second- and third-person pronouns before such a grammaticalisation could occur (again, see Helmbrecht's work).

You present it as a fact that this HASN'T grammaticalised. Now if your answer from typological research is to the question "why has this process not happened?", then the reasoning is not circular, but first you need to demonstrate that it has not happened. If the question is "how do we know that this process has not happened?", then your reasoning is circular. But the latter question is the one to which I seek an answer, even if you are not offering one.

--
Peter Kirk
E-mail: peter AT qaya.org
Blog: http://speakertruth.blogspot.com/
Website: http://www.qaya.org/





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