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At 05:35 PM 2003-01-01 -0800, Pilar Maritza Valenzuela wrote:<br>
<blockquote type=cite class=cite cite>A second possibility is that this
/n/ corresponds to the Spanish third<br>
person plural. However, it is hard for me to see why this
particular<br>
form of the verb would be selected for borrowing. A couple of<br>
colleagues have pointed out to me the fact that the third person<br>
plural has an impersonal sense, and in fact, the third person
plural<br>
suffix -kan is used in SK to mark impersonal passive. But I
cannot<br>
see why an impersonal form would be taken as the basis for all
types<br>
of verbs and uses.</blockquote><br>
In a paper published in 1987, Auli Hakulinen suggested, that the use of
impersonal verb forms in stead of the existing personal ones in
colloquial Finnish could be functionally motivated in terms of (negative)
politeness strategies.<br>
<br>
Reference:<br>
Hakulinen, Auli 1987: Avoiding personal reference in Finnish. In:
Verschueren & Bertucelli-Papi (eds.): The Pragmatic Perspective.
Selected papers from the 1985 International Pragmatics Conference. John
Benjamins, Amsterdam /Philadelphia ISBN 90 272 5006 5 (Europe)/ISBN
1-55619-011-5 (US).<br>
<br>
/Päivi Juvonen<br>
<br>
<br>
<blockquote type=cite class=cite cite>!Muchas gracias de antemano y Feliz
2003!<br>
<br>
Pilar Valenzuela</blockquote>
<x-sigsep><p></x-sigsep>
___________________________________________________<br>
<font size=2 color="#0000FF"><b>Päivi
Juvonen
<br>
</b>Studierektor/Director of
Studies
<br>
Inst för lingvistik/Dept of
Linguistics
<br>
Stockholms universitet/Stockholm
university
<br>
Tel. + 46 - 08 - 16 23 39 <br>
studierektor@ling.su.se/juvonen@ling.su.se </font></html>