Re: Verbal Inflection for Formality

On Thu, 22 Jun 2006 13:52:21 -0400, Roger Mills <rfmilly@...> wrote:

>AFAIK, only Japanese has really different _inflections_ for the honorific
>etc. forms. (And didn't someone mention Korean?   One would think there
>could be other languages.
If I understood aright, Korean has "two honorific systems", one of which
involves inflecting verbs, and the other one doesn't.  But I could be
wrong; I'm not even a beginner in Korean.

>And aren't there Japanese forms used only by the Emperor, and others used
>only _to_ him?
"We" is used as if first-person-singular by Popes and Emperors and Kings
and Queens in European languages.  Furthermore it gets plural agreement.
"We are not amused", Victoria said; not "We am not amused".

>I'd view things like Usted, Sie, vous, Your Grace/Majesty/etc. as simple
>vocab. replacements;
So far I think I'd agree with you.

>they don't require completely different verbs or verb forms.
Here I'd disagree in part.

"_Your_ Majesty" is, indeed, treated as if it were a replacement for "You"
(as you said);
but "Majesty" (_without_ "Your") requires third-person-singular agreement
of verbs, whether it is spoken _to_ the Sovereign or _about_ the Sovereign.
Same for "Highness" as opposed to "Your Highness".

Furthermore, in European languages such as French, the equivalent of "vous"
when addressed to just one person -- in other words, formal second person
singular rather than second person plural -- requires plural agreement in
the verb.  "Tu" gets singular agreement, but the formal "vous" gets plural
agreement even if it is addressed to just one person.

>Much the way Indonesian uses titles/offices etc. for politeness or
>when dealing with superiors. Then, along with familiar aku 'I', there's
>much more common saya, IIRC from a Skt. word for 'slave'.
(Thanks.  Indonosian and Javanese were some of the ones I was trying to
think of.)

And do the speaker-humble forms take third-person verb-agreement when the
(humble) speaker is the subject?

("the honorific system" includes what gets done to mark some actants as
humble, as well as what gets done to exalt other actants.)

BTW there are languages where part of the honorific system is in the voice;
an honorific referent can't ever be a non-subject participant of a clause
which has a non-honorific subject.  So if a lot is happening or has
happened or is going to happen to a prince, and you're telling someone
about it, you use the passive voice a _lot_.

>Even the Javanese system (familiar ngoko, lofty kromo, with several
>intermediate varieties) only involves vocab. replacement (or slightly
>deforming the word-- e.g. soré 'afternoon' ~kromo sont@n); otherwise no
>special morphology AFAIK.
Of course you know better than I, but check again and see whether when one
refers to oneself as "the sole of the foot" one's actions don't take third-
person agreement.

If Javanese isn't the example, and Indonesian isn't the example, mightn't
there be some other language that is nevertheless an example? Even a
European example?

>Similarly the various honorific terms in Kash, properly used when dealing
>with nobles and/or officialdom.
>
>Adding the hon.prefix par- ~pra- to every word associated with a lofty
>being is nowadays restricted to formulaic appeals to the Spirits (or
>translations of the 'paramamim' = Pater noster...)
Interesting!

-----
eldin

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