FW: Re: case and number in pronouns

[Chirkova, K.]

-----Original Message-----
From: Peter Austin [mailto:pa2 at soas.ac.uk]
Sent: Wednesday, March 26, 2003 4:28 PM
To: K.Chirkova at LET.LEIDENUNIV.NL
Subject: Re: Re: case and number in pronouns


Dear K. Chirikova,

Similar phenomena to those you reported also occur in Sasak, an Austronesian
language spoken on Lombok, eastern Indonesia.
In Sasak polite usage, second person possession is replaced by first person
plural (no inclusive/exclusive contrast) for kin terms. Thus, "Where is your
sister?" becomes "Where is our sister?". The same deictic switch also
applies for second to first person - thus it is polite to seek someone's
advice about one's own child by saying "I am worried about your son", or to
ask about the location of one's own spouse by asking "Have you seen your
wife?". Sasak has speech levels and high lexical forms can never be used for
self reference so anak=m 'child(low)=2nd' can only mean "my =child (polite)"
as against bije=m 'child(high)=2nd' for "your child".

Peter Austin

PS. Please forward to the list - I can't access it from this account.

Prof Peter K. Austin
Marit Rausing Chair in Field Linguistics
Director, Endangered Languages Academic Program
Department of Linguistics, SOAS
Thornhaugh Street, Russell Square
London WC1H 0XG
United Kingdom