Re: Labov's latest discovery in sociolinguistics

Paul J Kriha pravi:

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?

It seems to me that in this case the Czech polite plural is what we would call "napol-vikanje" (semi-polite or half-formal form, pol = half). The l-participle is in singular, but the auxiliary verb to be is in plural. In Slovene the forms would be:

informal - "Si ga videl(a)?" ("videla", if asking a female)
semi-formal - "Gospod, ste ga videl?" or "Gospa, ste ga videla?"
formal - "Gospod/Gospa, ste ga videli?"
ultra-formal - "Gospod/Gospa, so ga videli?"


Other dependent phrases in this semi-formal mode are also in singular, for example "Why are you so pale?" (bled = pale)

informal - "Zakaj si tako bled(a)?"
semi-formal - "Gospod, zakaj ste tako bled?" or "Gospa, zakaj ste tako bleda?"
formal - "Gospod/Gospa, zakaj ste tako bledi?"
ultra-formal - "Gospod/Gospa, zakaj so tako bledi?"


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.)

Nice. There is no vocative in Slovene, so this dictinction cannot appear.

"Gospod" and "Gospa" are plain nominative singular.



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

Slovene:

videl, videla
videli


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

Slovene:

si
ste

and additional

so - auxilliary verb (to be), 3rd person plural

ho - accusative of "on" (he)

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

Yes, pronouns are often omitted.

Earlier I wrote "Oni so rekli..." to clearly demontrate the use (and the name "onikanje") with "oni" (they). Usually one would omit the pronoun, and just say "Rekli so...". "Oni" would be used explicitely only if some kind of emphasis would needed to be expressed.


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


As in "Pane, viděl ho?"? Then the polite plural form would be the same as the singular form...?
.

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