Arabic-L:LING:Polite plurals in spoken Arabic query

[Dilworth Parkinson]

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Arabic-L: Wed 16 Sep 2009
Moderator: Dilworth Parkinson <dilworth_parkinson at byu.edu>
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1) Subject:Polite plurals in spoken Arabic query

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1)
Date: 16 Sep 2009
From: Kristen Brustad <brustad at austin.utexas.edu>
Subject:wPolite plurals in spoken Arabic query

Dear Colleagues,

A colleague of mine in Linguistics is doing a cross-linguistic  
investigation of "polite plurals"-- the use of the plural pronoun  
(antum) to a single addressee.
Of course, this happens regularly in fuSHaa  in formal situations,  
with plural verb and adjective agreement (HaDaraat-kum dhakartum  
anna ..).

The question is whether this happens in any spoken dialects of Arabic  
on a regular basis, and if so, are there ever contexts in which the  
plural pronoun might have singular verb agreement, something like:

HaDaraatkum fii jawaabkum illi ba3ath-tum imbaariH ..  dhakarta inna

Please respond to me off-line and i will post a summary to the list.
brustad at austin.utexas.edu

Many thanks,

Kristen

Kristen Brustad, PhD
Associate Chair and Graduate Studies Advisor
Department of Middle Eastern Studies
University of Texas at Austin
WMB 6.140

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