Re: Labov's latest discovery in sociolinguistics

"Trond Engen" <trondnet@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:47ecd56e$0$23850$8404b019@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Nikolaj skreiv:
Trond Engen pravi:
1. The royal we: Heads of political entities use 'we' to underline
that they speak on behalf of the collective.

[...]

Are these forms present in some other currently spoken or in some
earlier Slavic language?

I don't know. Isn't this a European medieval thing?

I don't know.

Slovenian is the only language I've heard of that keep a
distinction between the superpolite 3p plural and the polite 2p
plural.

Do you mean before my post?

No. Now. I didn't know before. I generally don't know anything
before.

As I said I wondered sometimes about it's origin, and I thought it might
be some old form like the dual. I learned German for four years in
secondary school, so I understand the German polite form, but I was
never consciously aware that it is in fact the third person plural. Or
at least, if I was aware while learning, I soon forgot it, and thought
of it as equvivalent of Slovene vikanje (2p plural). :(

It is, of course, more or less a functional equivalent.

If Yiddish uses 2p plural for the polite form and German 3p plural
then maybe some earlier Germanic language used both, just like
Slovenian?

Yes, that was my idea, or, at least, that some subset of German made the
distinction.

I suspect that the various formal grammatical forms have been relatively
late inventions and borrowings. AFAIK, they did not exist in Western
Slavic languages as late as in early 1400s. I recall reading a ficticious
conversation written by a linguist writer. The conversation was between
a 20th century Prague man and a 15th century Hussite warrior also
from Prague. The author made a special point in showing that the 15th
century Hussite did not understand the formal forms of the modern
language. Every time he heard the plural pronouns and plural verbs
he looked over his shoulder to see who else was in the room.


I have checked the Slovene online virtual library about onikanje: it
has two articles, one in 'Slovenski jezik = Slovene linguistic
studies ISSN: 1408-2616', and it seems it is in English:

AVTOR................... : Reindl, Donald F. - avtor
NASLOV.................. : Slovene ultra-formal address: borrowing,
innovation, and analysis
V PUBLIKACIJI........... : Slovenski jezik. - ISSN 1408-2616. - 6
(2007), str. [151]-168.
OSTALI NASLOVI.......... : Onikanje v slovenščini: prevzem, inovacija in
analiza
PREDMETNE OZNAKE........ : slovenščina // onikanje //
Slovene language // formal address

and one in a local newspaper.

I will make a copy and report back.

Here I coin 'superpolite' and then you find someone who's been using
'ultra-formal'. I bet someone will beat me even to my own funeral.

German seems to have lost the 2p plural, but I I see that both
Yiddish and Dutch have it. Could the distinction be alive in some
dialects, say Austrian?

But nowadays this superpolite form is more thought of in terms of
submission and it is not used anymore by majority (actually even
the polite form is receding).

Sure. My point was that since the polite plural is a cultural trait,
shared by most European languages, it has spread with culture.

Accordingly, one might suspect relics of its most developed form to
be found in neighbouring languages, where one might expect it to
have spread out from the center of culture and politics. Thus, I'd
not be surprised if the Slovene polite forms were derived from the
elevated language of the court of Vienna some centuries back, and
perhaps still alive also in some Austrian dialects. But I don't
_know_.

The formal second and third person plural have also been borrowed
into Western Slavic languages. The various dialects make slightly different
uses of them. I guess it's relatively easy to borrow a formal grammatical
form even from completely different language subfamily. It must be easier
than borrowing other language feature. There are no problems with
clashes between new forms and already existing grammatical
features. It often means that the already existing forms are used
almost unchanged as they are.

However, unlike Slovene, Czech never elevated the third person formal
quite as high as what Nikolaj says has done Slovene.
Between 1600s and early 1900s when Vienna was truly our empire
capital, the most of the townfolks lived in bilingual environment.
However, the third person plural remained being treated as 'foreign'.
It was typically used by street merchants and ordinary shopkeepers
to address their customers. In literature and films it was frequently
used to parody German speakers or parody uneducated Czech speakers
trying to sound educated and posh.

After 1918 disintegration of Austrian empire the third person plural
started to disapear from the Czech town dialects. It has hardly
ever made it into rural areas. After the WW2 it was heard only
in old films and parodies.


Do you think it spread across Europe from one point of origin,
somewhere in Austria?

Well. The superpo... ultra-formal is not that widespread. We (you and I)
know of it in Slovenian only.

Onikani (3rd ppl) seems to exist or have existed in other Slavic languages
of the old Austrian empire, not just Slovenian.
Now and then one can also hear 'mykani' (1st ppl).

For a list of languages with T-V distinction see:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T-V_distinction


There's a formal 3p plural in German,
(subsequently) Danish and (subsubsequently) Norwegian, but not in
Yiddish and Dutch, that might be essentially the same thing (but
replacing the older formal 2p plural rather than developing into a split
of formal levels like in Slovenian). This distribution suggests that
it's a fairly recent innovation originating in the High German area. And
perhaps that its center was somewhere close to Slovenia. How many German
speaking centers of international influence in polite manners do you
find around there?

But this is all purely speculative. We'll see what Donald Reindl has to say.

I don't know much about Austrian dialects from the
grammatical/linguistic point of view.

Neither do I.

This has little to do with English usage. Follow-up to sci.lang only.

--
Trond Engen
- hunting High and Low German

Tally ho!

pjk

.

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