Re: Igassik pronouns

On Sat, 4 Nov 2000 00:23:29 -0800, Marcus Smith <smithma@...> wrote:

(snip)

>The system doesn't really encode social distinctions like the SEA languages
>do, but rather the speakers level of respect for or general attituted
>toward that person in a given context.
>
>Example: Say I'm telling you about my wife's father. Since he is an in-law,
>I would use the formal pronouns krae and sor. I start telling you about
>what he was like when my wife was a child (as she had related it to me). In
>these cases, I slip into her point-of-view, and use the familiar pronouns
>keom and Doy (because that's what she would have used). He was an alcoholic
>and abused his wife and children, so when I talk about this from my own
>perspective, he gets the proximate/distal category depending on his
>physical and metaphorical distance at the moment: now and he or miu and
>Del. I don't go all the way to Animal because he has since reformed so is
>still worthy of some respect. Thus, when I talk about him in current
>contexts, I use the formal again. If he never did reform, then I could
>refer to him with the Animal forms hiu and ew.
>
>These are not the kinds of distinctions one would necessarily want to make
>when talking directly to someone. Hence, there is only a single set for
>first and second persons.
A nice place to visit, but I wouldn't want to live there.
Let's see, treat all people the same to their face, but dis them behind
their backs. Besides, I'd fall into the "animal" category -- an unmarried
person "over a certain age". We won't go into the other possibilities!
Anyway, with all the apparently unrelated pronouns, it looks like a
language only a native (or a linguistics graduate student) would ever learn.
I like your example.

Jeff