...
Now to you contention that "[l]ooking at other languages will only result in a lot of hot air". This is your view, and you are entitled to it. It is certainly not mine, and I would need convincing to move to such a position. Typology has demonstrated again and again that cross-linguistic variation in languages reveal systematic patterns ... I fail to see that this is "hot air"; rather, it is a concrete language predication. ...
... Further, it raises a helpful question concerning Revell's proposal and helps to raise the issues of evaluation: a) what is the nature of the synchronic politeness contrast(s); b) what is the diachronic development of the contrast(s), that is, can the development be traced to known politeness sources; and c) how has such a process occurred in BH when in other languages the process only happens after a distinction is made in the second person. Now, Revell's study has only touched in part on a). b) and c) are not discussed at all. But it is c) that is where it would get really interesting, for this would be getting at the heart of the function. But a study might flounder on completing a) such that a complete synchronic demonstration of a politeness distinction from the data might not be justifiable and hence b) and c) would be unnecessary.Of course it would be nice to be able to answer b) and c). But the available data from Hebrew might be enough for us to demonstrate a), or at least show that it is a probable explanation, without being able to find out much about b) and c). I guess this is the position with Hixkaryana, since it has no written record; we can simply observe that it has this unusual word order without being able to find out how or why. And the same could easily be true of Hebrew politeness distinctions.
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