Borrowing pronouns

[Max W Wheeler]

On Thu, 25 Mar 1999, Barbara Need wrote:

> I have noticed that, in this discussion on the possible sources
> of Spanish Usted (Vuestra Merced vs. an Araboc word for 'teacher'),
> nothing has been said about the fact that, at least in Modern
> Spanish, the pronoun occurs with _third_ person forms, not second
> person forms. Having only just read the proposal that the form
> is from Arabic, I accepted that Vuestra Merced, like Your Majesty
> in English, would occur with third person verbs. Is it equally
> likely that the Arabic Teacher would also have occurred with
> third person verbs?

Indeed not; which is yet another reason not to take this `look-alike' as
a serious etymology. And why anyway take a word for `teacher' to do
general duty for persons of superior status? There's no evidence I know
of to separate <usted>, or <vostè>, <você>, etc., from that general
range of items alluding to the superior person's qualities: `grace',
`excellence', `majesty', `honour', `gentitlity',etc.

Max
___________________________________________________________________________
Max W. Wheeler <maxw at cogs.susx.ac.uk>
School of Cognitive and Computing Sciences
University of Sussex, Falmer, Brighton BN1 9QH, UK
Tel: +44 (0)1273 678975; fax: +44 (0)1273 671320
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