Re: Second person/polite pronouns (fuit Re: Another Ozymandias)

T4 has a rather complicated system of pronouns - I must have been in an odd
mood that day.
Unfortunately I don't have my notes with me at the moment, but I can give
the basics from
memory. There are three relevant variables, which I refer to as
"familiarity" (F), "authority" (A) and
"servility" (S).

Familiarity is the simplest, and takes only two values. One is used
exclusively for second person, while
the other generally means first person, except that in relationships of
great intimacy (typically
spouses or close relatives) the first-person form may be used for second
person as well (A and S are
sufficient to disambiguate). A separate system is used for third person.

Authority and servility each take three values, low, default and high. The
prototypical relationship in
which authority is asymmetrical is parent-child, so that the parent would
call the child by a low-A
(first-person, remember) pronoun and the child would use a high-A pronoun
for the parent. Referring
to themselves when talking to each other, the child would use low A and the
parent high A, in
effect "agreeing" with each other on the values of A in the relationship.
Other relationships with
asymmetrical A include teacher-pupil, doctor-patient, etc. If the
relationship is symmetrical with
respect to A, both speakers simply use default A for themselves and each
other.

The prototype for asymmetrical S is the master-servant relationship. This is
where it gets really
complicated. :) In principle, there could be a full-servility situation
parallel to the full-authority situation
I described, where both speakers (X and Y) use high-S pronouns for X and
low-S pronouns for Y.
However, this is very unusual. For example, the default situation is *not*
simply default S all round -
you use default S for the other person but low S for yourself, as if saying
"I acknowledge that you're
not trying to dominate me but I am at your service nonetheless." If the
other person agrees that
the situation is one of symmetrical S, he will of course refer to you with
default S and to himself with
low S.

On the other hand, if the relationship is genuinely asymmetrical with
respect to servility, humble
speaker X will use low S for himself and high S for his less humble
interlocutor Y. Y now has a tricky
choice to make. He may wish to agree with X that the situation is
asymmetrical, in which case he will
use low S for X but only default S for himself (as in the default situation,
he has to stay one step
below X's opinion of him to maintain basic politeness). Or he may wish to
give X the idea that he
sees the situation differently, in which case he may either adopt a
completely default posture (low S
for self, default S for other), or a compromise (default S for both).

The six possible F and A combinations have six different CV-shaped words to
describe them. The
value of S is expressed as a suffix to the F-A word. These suffixes may also
be used with words
referring to third persons, if the speaker wishes to express honour or the
contrary, or if the speaker
wants to make it clear that the referent of the word is animate but the word
and context are
ambiguous in this respect (in which case default or high S may be used,
depending on the speaker's
relationship to the third person).

Carsten wrote:
>NB (this is *VERY* OT, though): Y'all are aware that the
>list turns 15 years old this Saturday? It was started on my
>brother's birthday coincidentally, which is July 29, 1991,
29th July is also my brother's birthday. He's fourteen years older than the
list, though. :))

Jonathan.

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