from vy to oni

[Henning Andersen]

To the question of the origin of the polite vy one might add that of 
the polite oni for a single third person referred to in a speech act 
s/he is witness to. Is this a 'mere' analogy to vy? Or did it exist 
when the use of vy was introduced?

H

>Hi,
>
>Thanks to all those who have striven to put me on the right
>path regarding the "polite vy". I am following up all leads
>with the captiousness of old age. However, I offer this to
>be going on with, by way of Alina Israeli:
>
>Paul Friedrich
>"Structural Implications of Russian Pronominal Usage (1966)"
>in: Language, Context, and the Imagination. Essays by
>Paul Friedrich
>Selected and Introduced by Anwar S. Dil
>Stanford University Press, 1979, pp. 74-75
>
>French determined Russian pronominal usage. Only ty had been
>employed till about 1700, whereas "... the French manner of
>address to one person in the plural number appeared in the
>eighteenth century and rapidly became current among the
>educated circles" (Isachenko 1960: 414). By 1800, more or
>less when French was instituted as a "passport," the use of
>the plural vy as a formal and respectful singular, on analogy
>with French vous, had become established and launched on its
>independent course, although subsequently reinforced and subtly
>influenced by the pervasive French bilingualism and constant
>exposure to French novels and plays.
>
>A.V. Isachenko
>Grammaticheskii stroi russkogo iazyka v sopostavlenii s
>slovatskim. Morfologiia. Chast' vtoraia.
>Bratislava, 1960, p 414
>
>Pri obrashchenii v russkom iazyke, kak i v ... frantsuzskom i dr.
>upotrebliaetsia tak nazyvaemaia forma vezhlivosti, obrashchenie
>"na vy" (vykanie). V russkom iazyke eta frantsuzskaia manera
>obrashcheniia k odnomu litsu vo mnozhestvennom chisle poiavilas'
>v XVIII veke i ochen' bystro voshla v obikhod obrazovannykh
>krugov.
>
>In due course I shall post a summary of my findings.
>
>S Novym godom!
>John Dingley
>
>--------------------
>http://dlll.yorku.ca/jding.html
>
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|||||   Henning Andersen

|||||   Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures
|||||   University of California, Los Angeles
|||||   P.O.Box 951502
|||||   Los Angeles, CA 900095-1502

|||||   Phone: +1-310-837-6743  Fax: +1-310-206-5263
|||||   http://www.humnet.ucla.edu/humnet/slavic/faculty/andersen_h.html

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