Re: CHAT: Politeness in conlangs

Christophe Grandsire wrote:
>
>         Same for Italian: "lei".
Well, in that case, "lei" referred back to an earlier third-person
pronoun, similar to Spanish _usted_ (from _vuestra merced_ - your
grace).  What I found odd was the use of third-person plural as a
generic second-person plural.  But, perhaps at an earlier stage of the
conlang that started this thread, like Italian, there was a third-person
periphrase that became generalized in the plural (and perhaps lost in
the second, or perhaps the origin of his formal pronoun), and the 3P
pronoun came to be used to refer back to it.

--
Happy that Nation, - fortunate that age, whose history is not diverting
-- Benjamin Franklin
http://members.tripod.com/~Nik_Taylor/X-Files/
http://members.tripod.com/~Nik_Taylor/Books.html
ICQ #: 18656696
AIM screen-name: NikTailor