Biblical Hebrew Forum

[David Kummerow <farmerjoeblo AT hotmail.com>]

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