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Re: Phaleran Imperatives and Politeness markers

From:Nik Taylor <fortytwo@...>
Date:Tuesday, August 28, 2001, 22:18
Jesse Bangs wrote:
> I'm immediately struck that none of these are the same! That is > certainly a lot to remember, although I suppose any one person would only > have to know one line of the chart. Still, I would expect that some of > these would repeat. What are the etymologies of the clitics?
And it does seem to be unusually systematic. One would expect it to be a bit more complicated, varying depending on many different circumstances, like, relative age, or context, so that one could choose a more flattering form of address if, for example, one were requesting a favor. And what about within a social class? There relative age might be very important, the young having to use polite terms of address for their elders within the same social class. Also, perhaps a phenomenon would occur as in Japanese, where the forms gradually become less polite. In fact, there might even be forms that would be used to denigrate the addressee, as Japanese does with some pronouns like _kisama_ -- Cenedl heb iaith, cenedl heb galon A nation without a language is a nation without a heart - Welsh proverb ICQ: 18656696 AIM Screen-Name: NikTaylor42

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Thomas R. Wier <artabanos@...>