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.

On a related subject:

The Slavic polite 2nd ppl is often grammatically more complicated
than just having one pronoun substituted for another. The verbal forms
are also affected and some tenses have polite forms different from
either the 2nd person singular or plural.

Take a simple example, a question "Have you seen him?":

Familiar singular: Pane, viděl jsi ho?
Polite plural: Pane, viděl jste ho? (different from either fam. or ord.plural)
Ordinary plural: Pánové, viděli jste ho?

Pane - vocative of Pán (Sir)
Pánové - plural vocative of Pán
(Note that singular address is used in both familiar and polite forms.
However, if pronouns are used they have plural polite forms.)

Viděl - past tense of viděti, single
Viděli - past tense of viděti, plural

jsi - auxilliary verb (to be), 2nd person singular
jste - aux.verb (to be) 2nd person plural

ho - accusative of "on" (he)

Pronoun is omitted since the person is already marked by aux. verb.

BTW, the third person of either number can omit the auxilliary verb
as well as the pronoun.

pjk


Trond Engen
- hunting High and Low German

.

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