Borrowed verbs

[Paivi Juvonen]

At 05:35 PM 2003-01-01 -0800, Pilar Maritza Valenzuela wrote:
>A second possibility is that this /n/ corresponds to the Spanish third
>person plural.  However, it is hard for me to see why this particular
>form of the verb would be selected for borrowing.  A couple of
>colleagues have pointed out to me the fact that the third person
>plural has an impersonal sense, and in fact, the third person plural
>suffix -kan is used in SK to mark impersonal passive.  But I cannot
>see why an impersonal form would be taken as the basis for all types
>of verbs and uses.

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.

Reference:
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).

/Päivi Juvonen


>!Muchas gracias de antemano y Feliz 2003!
>
>Pilar Valenzuela

___________________________________________________
Päivi Juvonen
Studierektor/Director of Studies
Inst för lingvistik/Dept of 
Linguistics
Stockholms universitet/Stockholm 
university
Tel. + 46 - 08 - 16 23 39
studierektor at ling.su.se/juvonen at ling.su.se 
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