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  • From: David Kummerow <farmerjoeblo AT hotmail.com>
  • To: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] We and us
  • Date: Wed, 22 Nov 2006 08:30:03 +1100


Hi Karl,

Thanks for the continuing discussion. In the next few days I'll send you some documents...

Just a few clarifications on the below:

1. That God uses אנכי doesn't rule out politeness prima facie: God may instead be choosing to speak politely and that's fine.

2. I don't think it's a mistake to call it grammaticalisation if politeness is what is involved with the choice of the two forms. For such a choice to develop, the polite form needs to have become included at some point in the development of the language as part of the pronominal paradigm. It would need to have changed its former usage to now convey 1st person politeness. Since the process of change in language is termed grammaticalisation (American "grammaticalization") in linguistics, I do not think it is a mistake to label this a grammaticalisation if politeness can be demonstrated. We would, I would argue, be using correct and up-to-date terminology.

Regards,
David Kummerow.

David:

Thanks for your response.

In other words, as I understand your letter, there has been only one
study made on the phenomenon, and it covered only a small minority of
the data. This is not what I was looking for, an incomplete treatment
of the subject. This is what I mean is too early to make comparisons
with practices in other languages, as we don't know yet what it means
in Hebrew.

I missed your one and only earlier message concerning immediacy vs
non-immediacy, found that you are unsatisfied with his vague
description. In that message it was mentioned that he had analyzed
only Samuel and Kings.

That God uses אנכי for himself is an indication that politeness is not
the function. That men use it shows that it is not a theological term,
i.e. limited to God. I think it is a mistake to call it a
grammatization, as we are trying to find out when to use one term, and
when to use another making this a vocabulary issue.

Yours, Karl W. Randolph.







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