Person Plural Forms Research Articles

Special pronominal forms in Saaroa

Abstract Saaroa has a special set of pronominal forms not found in most other Formosan languages, as first noted by Pan (2018). This study departs from his claims that these forms only function as plurals. In fact, extensive Saaroa texts collected by different linguists (Li 2023) at different periods of time indicate that they can be either singular or plural. The functions of both the special free and bound forms will be clarified. Above all, they are contrastive. The origin of the special forms in Saaroa is suggested as a diffusion from Kanakanavu, which has similar forms with similar functions recorded earlier and is geographically adjacent. That the first person plural forms may function as singular is found not only in a few other Formosan languages, but also in unrelated languages. This study has thus cross-linguistic evidence and implications for languages in general.

Sobre el valor pseudo inclusivo de la primera persona del plural en laIlíada

In the Iliad, first person plural forms are scarcely used with a pseudo-inclusive meaning. This use is observed in potentially face-threatening speech acts, concretely, both in directives and in complaints, and it reflects different (im)politeness strategies. The pseudo-inclusive meaning is promoted by the description of non-factual states of affairs and by contextual devices that orient the discourse to the interlocutor. In directives, pseudo-inclusive forms function, as previous studies have suggested, as a positive politeness strategy. In most of the complaints, on the contrary, the pseudo-inclusive forms may be rather analysed as a negative politeness strategy, particularly, as a means to protect the addressee’s self-esteem and dignity. In these contexts, pseudo-inclusive forms contribute to avoid the expression of direct disapproval and accusation. In other complaints, however, pseudo-inclusive forms function as a mock politeness strategy. In these cases, the pseudo-inclusive meaning serves the speaker to humiliate the addressee and to reinforce his/her own social or moral position of superiority.

Collective Memory，Living History：We-Narrative in Julia Otsuka’s The Buddha in the Attic

The last two decades have witnessed increasing interest in social minds and collective narrative. The first person plural form is frequently employed by women writers and African-America writers to endow the marginalized groups with voices. This article approaches Julie Otsuka’s historical novel The Buddha in the Attic(2011) in this context. One of the most striking features of The Buddha in the Attic is its we-narrative. Yet its power is undervalued in the earlier reviews. This article argues that we-narrative in The Buddha in the Attic is an especially effective narrative technique to express the collective minds of the marginalized and muted Japanese “picture brides” and gives them long overdue voices to articulate their hidden and forgotten life stories.

El vosotrismo o vosotreo del habla canaria: causas y consecuencias

"There is not and there has never been, in the Spanish pronominal system, a more unstable field than that of second person plural forms. This grammatical subsystem has unceasingly evolved since the origins of the language. It has been conditioned by the need to renovate the forms of treatment of respect towards the listener. Social use inevitably degrades these formulas as the use of courtesy forms is generalized. This article aims to describe and explain, both semantically and socially, the heterogeneous situations that the use of this system (in particular, the form vosotros) presents in the current Canarian society. These situations point out to more or less ingenious solutions, like the conversion of the classic form of familiar treatment vosotros into a formula of respect whose future is quite uncertain, due to the pressure exerted by the most educated Canarian speakers and by the rules of the standard language."

OVERCOMING THE BOUNDARIES OF EVERYDAYNESS IN NIALL GRIFFITHS`S NOVEL «STUMP»

The paper presents the research of poetics of the fourth novel «Stump» (2004) written by contemporary Welsh Anglophone author Niall Griffiths. The early works of Niall Griffiths have long been associated with the off-center tendency in contemporary British fiction, with novels written by Scottish authors such as Irvine Welsh, James Kelman, John King. This study attempts to demonstrate that Welsh writer doesn’t merely articulate the problems of the fringe groups of the society as well as shocking and taboo topics. Also to overcome the common postcolonial approach to Griffiths`s works which focuses on the concepts of «colonial othering», «forms of disability» etc. in the novels, the author of the article proposes the existential philosophy as methodological basis for this research. The study concentrates over the central problem of the human Being-in-the-world, the human life in the world of everydayness in Griffiths`s novel «Stump». Understanding «the everyday life», «everydayness» as common, routine life, full of daily automatic human actions (according to B. Waldenfels) the author aims to consider the boundaries of everyday life and the experience of overcoming the borders of everydayness in the novel discussed.The analysis demonstrates that narrative structure of the novel combines several modes and forms of narration. Interior monologue with steam of consciousness fragments is the form of representing the first plot line focusing on the one day of nameless recovering alcoholic who has lost his left arm to gangrene. «Style indirect libre» in first person plural form is used to finish each of the chapter devoted to one-armed hero and expresses his contradictory point of view on the «12 steps addiction recovery» program. The non-diegetic impersonal narrator (according to V. Shmid classification) introduces the second plot line devoted to the two gangsters who have set out from Liverpool on a mission to find and punish the one-armed man for a past misdeed. Their continual dialog sometimes is interrupted by the omnipresent narrator voice who conveys in form of indirect speech one of the gangster`s thoughts and his perceptive and ideological «point of view». A Griffiths`s fictional space can be divided on close/open, secular/sacral, everyday/non-everyday types. In the novel Wales natural world is opposed to any closed and narrow spaces. One-armed protagonist fills himself free and happy in the open space, where he communicates with birds, animals and meets a pantheistic God. Oppositely, two gangsters are afraid of open space in the middle of dangerous nature of Wales, when they leave native Liverpool. Having the works of K. Jaspers and M. Merleau-Ponty as the basis for our research, we conclude that the body for one-armed hero is an existential and temporal border, which transforms each moment of his life into an endless «boundary situation» (germ. Grenzsituation, according to K. Jaspers). A journey to unknown Wales gives a start to personal transformations for one of the gangsters – Alastair. Crossing the geographical border becomes a time of «boundarysituation» in Alastair`s existence. Consequently, the motives of the real Being, existential self-identity, meeting with the transcendent are concerned with the experience of overcoming the everydayness, crossing its boundaries.

Soziopragmatik von unser bei Rufnamen im Westmitteldeutschen.

Speakers of Western Central German dialects frequently use the first person plural form of the possessive article unser with proper names (e. g. us Dietmar ‘our Dietmar’). But conditions of use are so far totally unclear. This paper focuses on form and use of unser with proper names in Moselle Franconian dialects. The findings are based on interviews. They show that unser is primarily used to refer to blood relatives. However, consanguinity is a necessary, but not sufficient, condition for unser. In particular, its use is triggered by social closeness and the assumption of responsibility by the speaker.

Overlapping subjunctive forms in Gallo- and Ibero-Romance verb paradigms

Abstract In several varieties of Catalan, Valencian and Occitan, inflectional exponents originating in the imperfect subjunctive (reflex of Latin pluperfect subjunctive) are analogically extended into the first and second person plural present subjunctive forms, resulting in syncretism between present and imperfect subjunctive forms for the relevant persons. The scope and directionality of such extensions are remarkably consistent, and are indicative of a change driven by the structure of the inflectional paradigm in the relevant varieties. A significant consequence of this development, which fits into a general Romance tendency for analogical remodelling of first and second person plural forms, is alignment between previously overlapping distributions of stem allomorphs and stress placement, and thus greater predictability of inflected forms.

Genitive marking on second person plural pronouns you all, y’all, yall

This paper explores the use of possessive second person plural forms you all(’)s, y’all(’)s and yall(’)s in World Englishes. A corpus-based analysis provides information about the frequencies of occurrence and geographical location, the context of occurrence, the connotation and semantic preference of possessive you all, y’all and yall. The analysis also highlights the differences between you all(’)s, y’all(’)s and yall(’)s and standard your.

WHO IS THAT MYSTERIOUS WE IN RUSSIAN AND ESTONIAN? (ON THE METAPHORICAL USE OF 1st PERSON PLURAL FORMS)

The article is devoted to the metaphorical use of 1person plural forms in Russian and Estonian. Personal pronouns is one of the first topics that is introduced to the learner of any language. In Russian and Estonian the systems of personal pronouns are quite similar. The essence of the 1person plural is primarily defined as follows: ‘a speaker refers to himself or herself and somebody else’. That somebody else can be one person, many people, or even people in general. It can sometimes be very difficult to decide to whom we refers. The metaphorical use of 1 person plural forms is not identical in Russian and Estonian. Some metaphorical uses are regular in Russian but are not common in Estonian; it depends on the cultural and linguistic traditions of the language in question. In the paper will be analysed some cases of metaphorical use, such as 'royal we', 'authorial we', plural of modesty, 'doctoral we', ‘sartorial we’, 'mother’s we' etc. It is noticeable that these metaphorical uses can cause some difficulties in learning the language and also in the translation process. It can be claimed that in Russian and with some limitations also in Estonian the 1 person plural can “replace” all the other pronouns and verb forms. It is important to keep in mind these differences between languages when teaching or translating.

Force, content and the varieties of subject

This paper argues that to account for group speech acts, we should adopt a representationalist account of mode / force. Individual and collective subjects do not only represent what they e.g. assert or order. By asserting or ordering they also indicate their theoretical or practical positions towards what they assert or order. The ‘Frege point’ cannot establish the received dichotomy of force and propositional content. On the contrary, only the representationalist account allows a satisfactory response to it. It also allows us to give a more satisfactory analysis of the speech act of inviting a joint commitment and to answer two important questions Bernhard Schmid has raised about group speech acts, namely whether there are 1st person plural forms of Moore’s paradox and of 1st person authority.

Consanguinity and Possession in Varieties of Dutch

Southern varieties of Dutch use the 1st person plural form of the possessive pronounonsas a marker of consanguinity with proper names, as inons Emma‘Emma, our consanguineous family member’. This use ofons‘our’ has some remarkable properties: It is incompatible with adjectival modification and contrastive stress. These properties are shared with a construction from Standard Dutch: complex prenominals-possessors consisting of the 1st person singular form of the possessive pronoun and a kinship term as inmijn vaders fiets‘my father's bike’. We propose that both these constructions are constructional idioms (Booij 2002), a lexical template with a variable part. This offers a straightforward account of the properties of these constructions.*

Mixed agreement, the person feature, and the index/concord distinction

In mixed agreement, different agreement targets show different values for the same controller. This paper offers an explanation for the existence of mixed agreement that accounts for the following Polite Plural Generalization: universally, any second person ‘polite plural’ pronouns (e.g. French vous), used honorifically for a single addressee, control syntactic (plural) agreement on all person targets, while non-person-agreeing targets such as predicate adjectives vary across languages, between syntactic and semantic number agreement. Following Wechsler and Zlatic (The Many Faces of Agreement, CSLI Publications, 2003), person features exist only as features of referential indices (Index phi features), never as grammatical head features of the sort that are involved in adjective-noun concord (Concord phi features). Mixed agreement arises if the ‘polite plural’ or other pronominal controller is underspecified for Concord phi features. But a pronoun has a referential Index, which is necessarily marked with phi features, so any Index agreement targets will appear in the second person plural form. A diachronic explanation is offered for this bifurcation of agreement targets into Index and Concord targets: the former descend from incorporated pronouns while the latter have other sources.

VOSEO, EL OTRO CASTELLANO DE AMÉRICA

Este artículo hace un recorrido por el origen, tipos y desarrollo del voseo, forma con la que se expresan las dos terceras partes de los habitantes del continente americano, con el propósito de reflexionar sobre la posibilidad de que se incorpore a la enseñanza en las escuelas y en la producción de contenidos de los medios de comunicación de las regiones que lo utilizan habitualmente y lo conciben como un fuerte elemento de identidad cultural. Con el estudio delvoseo se quiere contribuir a la comprensión de un fenómeno lingüístico muy arraigado en América Latina y el Caribe, que amerita un reconocimiento mayor y una investigación permanente, toda vez que su evolución a pesar de las rígidasreglas del castellano tradicional de España se constituye en un acto de rebeldía y autonomía como el que expresaron nuestros próceres hace doscientos para darnos la independencia.Palabras clave: Voseo, educación, América Latina y el Caribe, Medios de Comunicación.

Why we can be you: The use of 1st person plural forms with hearer reference in English and Spanish

This article focuses on the phenomenon of 1st person plural forms being used with hearer reference, e.g. a teacher saying to his/her students “We’re going to be quiet now” in Spanish (a pro-drop language) and English (a non-pro-drop language), paying attention to both contrasts and similarities between them. The physical persons involved in interaction (speaker and hearer) are distinguished from the discursive roles (addresser and addressee). While coinciding by default, in some cases the interpretation of the 1st person plural forms shifts towards the addressee, thus triggering a hearer-dominant reading. On the one hand, this shift is argued to be not merely a matter of contextual interpretation, but to be triggered by linguistic elements, such as vocatives, interrogative speech acts and tense. On the other hand, the politeness judgment of this strategy is questioned in the light of various (im)politeness theories and a plea is made for taking into account the broader linguistic and non-linguistic context of the utterance. While the hearer-dominant reading occurs both in English and in Spanish, there appear to be differences as to the impact of the subject pronoun and the position of the strategy within the address system as a whole.

Forms of address and ambiguity in Caribbean English-lexicon Creoles: Strategic interactions in a postcolonial language setting

Forms of address in the Caribbean are part of a complex politeness system which developed as a result of the socio-historical conditions of the plantation system, the transfer and continuities of socio-pragmatic rules from West African and European cultural and linguistic traditions, as well as new creolized or innovative practices. Terms of address are not only indicative of the social position and identity of a person in a community but are also often used strategically in situations of potential conflict. Many of the nominal terms of address and their adaptation to specific conversational situations may be explained in the light of the specific postcolonial cultural and linguistic ambiguity in the Anglophone Caribbean. Like numerous non-standard Englishes, Caribbean Englishes and Creoles also have second-person pronominal distinction. Since the plural form is neither used for obligatory plural marking nor as a honorific as in many European (T/V) languages, this distinction has so far been regarded as insignificant and little or no research has been devoted to systematically investigating the possible strategic meaning of second person plural forms like allyuh (Trinidad) or unu (Jamaica). Based on empirical research in Trinidad, I will argue in this paper that the plural form is used either to emphasize the existence of plural addressees or for face management in positive and negative face threatening situations. To either single or multiple addressees, the plural form can be used as a politeness strategy in specific situations, for instance to express vagueness or indirectness when a speech act could be otherwise interpreted as face-threatening.

Developing a dyadic OPTION scale to measure perceptions of shared decision making

Objective Our aim was to develop a measurement which enables research into the interdependent nature of clinical encounters. The prime objective was to develop an instrument capable of assessing the extent to which patients have been involved in (shared) decision making from two viewpoints—that of the patient and the clinician. Methods To develop an initial ‘ dyadic OPTION’ instrument, the twelve original third-person items were drafted in passive, first person plural forms. Using this version initially, three rounds of cognitive debriefing interviews were held. These were audio-recorded and analysed at the end of each round and the results used to revise the dyadic OPTION scale. Results It was possible to modify the observer OPTION instrument into an instrument for completion by both clinicians and patients after a dyadic interaction. Cognitive debriefing revealed five areas of interpretative difficulty. Each item of the observer OPTION scale underwent modification in order to develop a dyadic version of the scale. Conclusions The dyadic OPTION scale is acceptable and comprehensible by both clinicians and public respondents. Cognitive debriefing adapted and refined an existing scale and provided confidence that the core constructs of the scale (perceived involvement in decisions making) were understood. Practice implications Further validation of the dyadic OPTION scale is required prior to its use in research settings.

Watkins' Law and the development of agglutinative inflections in Asia Minor Greek

This paper interprets the agglutinative inflection of the copula and passive imperfect in Cappadocian and Bithynian as an adaptation of the Greek to the Turkish inflection on the basis of the third person singular in accordance with Watkins' Law. The first and second person plural forms of these agglutinative inflections add the corresponding Turkish personal suffixes to the Greek ones in the Cappadocian dialect of Semendere and the Lycaonian dialect of Silli. It is argued that the Turkish personal suffixes have been added because of the superficial formal similarity of the Greek ones with the corresponding Turkish temporal suffixes. The addition of the Turkish personal suffixes is interpreted as a case of triggered code-switching and hence as a violation of Poplack's Free Morpheme Constraint.

Pronouns of power and solidarity: The case of Spanish first person pluralnosotros

AbstractStudies of personal reference to the speaker in Spanish have typically focused on the presence or absence and position when present of the personal pronoun and have taken place within the fields of theoretical syntax or variationist sociolinguistics. This study places the occurrence of the first person plural form within the framework of interactional pragmatics and investigates the potential effects of extralinguistic factors on the linguistic choices of speakers within a broad framework of Gricean pragmatics and politeness theory. It argues that the indeterminacy or ambivalence inherent in speaker–hearer reference functions as a strategic resource and that an awareness of the status of and relationship between participants (power and solidarity) and of their interactional goals as well as an awareness of the mechanics of ‘politeness’ itself can be crucial to the negotiation and maintenance of interpersonal relationships.

Choosing between the Aorist and the Present Perfect: The Case of Modern Greek

Choosing between the Aorist and the Present Perfect: the Case of Modern Greek1 Cornelia Paraskevas-Shepard An important issue in current linguistic theories is the role that context plays in the understanding and interpretation of a sentence. According to a widely accepted definition of semantics (presented in Kempson's Semantic Theory), the meaning of a sentence is the set of truth conditions under which the sentence is true; two sentences, then, which share the same truth conditions, should have the same meaning. It often happens, however, that although the truth conditions of two sentences are the same, there is a difference in "appropriateness " between them; in other words, the sentences differ with respect to the context/situation in which they can be used. For example , in Greek, the following sentences have the same meaning but differ in appropriateness; they are supposed to be used in different contexts: Eisai theios mou. You-2nd sg. are uncle mine "You are my uncle." Eiste theios mou. You-2nd pi. are uncle mine "You are my uncle." The first sentence implies that the speaker and the hearer perceive themselves as being at the same level; it can be used when there is a relatively close relation between the speaker and the hearer. In the second sentence, the speaker, by using the second person plural form, is indicating his respect for or "social" distance from the hearer. The sentences could be used interchangeably; however, they could be inappropriate given the particular circumstances. Similarly, the difference between the following two sentences (which mean the same) is context based; it is dependent upon the 51 52 Cornelia Paraskevas-Shepard previous knowledge that the speaker has about the reading habits of the hearer. 'Eheis diavásei Kazantzáki? You-have read Kazantzakis "Have you read any Kazantzakis?" and Diávases Kazantzáki? You-read Kazantzáki "Did you read any Kazantzakis?" In both examples, previous knowledge or "social" considerations , which we include in the notion of context, account for the differences between the sentences; these differences are not semantic, since they are not due to a difference in the truth-conditions of the sentences, but pragmatic, since they are due to contextual considerations . The important role that context plays in the interpretation of sentences can be seen in the distinction between the aorist and the present perfect in modern Greek. This paper attempts to describe this distinction on the basis of extra-linguistic/pragmatic factors, such as previous knowledge, shared knowledge and point of view; as such, it should be of importance to linguists investigating the role of context in the understanding of sentences. In addition, it should be of importance to anyone studying modern Greek; the difference between the aorist and the present perfect, being context-based, is hard for a non-native speaker to grasp, although grammar books and descriptions of modern Greek fail to state this fact, claiming that the distinction between the two tenses is a clear one. Thus, according to Tzartzanos' grammar book, the aorist is used for an event or an action that took place in the past and was completed, or it can be used instead of a present tense. As Mirambel (1978) and Seiler (1952) state, the aorist can also be used instead of a future, whenever the event/action is to follow immediately; in the latter case, then, the aorist has a future value (in Seller's terms "aoriste a valeur de futur ") and the actions represented by the aorist are viewed as completed . Thus, for example, if I am about to finish writing a paper, but not yet done, my answer to the question. 1. Pósi ora hreiázesai akóma? How-much-fem. hour you-need still "How much time do you still need?" can be either 1'. Teleióno. I-finish "I am finishing," or The Aorist and the Present Perfect 53 1 ' '. Teleiosa. I-finished "I will be done in a minute." The present perfect, then, is to be used for an action/event that took place in the past and whose effects are still lasting, or it is used for an action that took place in the past whose result is shown, or...