Re: Ethical Dative, was Re: Polysynthetic Languages

Staving Christophe Grandsire:
>En réponse à Costentin Cornomorus :
>
>
>>Yeah. That makes sense.
>
>Indeed.
>
>>  An "ethical possessive"?
>
>Since this kind of phenomenon is purely communicative and has nothing to
>do with syntax, I'd expect various mechanisms to be used with the same
>effect in different (or even in the same language. French also has this
>"ethical possessive").
>
>
>>Still, we can't do this with *my or *her.
>
>Not a problem. As I said earlier, languages often have constraints about
>what they can do with the "ethical dative". French can use it only in the
>second person, Spanish IIRC only in the first person, Basque only in the
>second person when the sentence doesn't contain already a dative
>complement, etc... So having your "ethical possessive" limited to the
>second person is no big deal ;))) .
This reminds me of a gramaticalised etiquette system I once thought up. The
language has a topic-comment structure. There are five modes of speech,
superior, informal, neutral, polite and deferential. In the neutral mode,
one does not topicalise oneself or the addressee. In the polite mode, the
addressee is topicalised whenever they are naturally referred to in the
sentence, and in the informal mode the speaker will topicalise references
to himself. In the deferential mode (used when speaking to social
superiors) one deliberately introduces the addressee into the sentence and
topicalises them, and in the superior mode (used when asserting dominance
over someone), the speaker deliberately intoduces himself into the sentence
as a topic.

Pete