[Lingtyp] Name this category

Thu Jan 23 14:52:53 UTC 2020

In terms of politeness theory, indices of casualness/informality fall under ‘positive’, i.e., solidarity-oriented redress strategies - strategies exchanged among interlocutors who wish to treat each other as solidaries (Brown & Levinson 1987). It is well known that the use of such strategies varies somewhat by gender. Probably the best-known example are first-person pronouns in Japanese, selection among which depends heavily on speaker gender, solidarity, and situational formality. The interactions are super-complex, as shown by the recent data in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_pronouns#Use_and_etymology.

The mechanisms that cause the gender effect are still not entirely well understood, as far as I know. There are two relevant observations, which are not directly at odds with one another, but which seem to suggest tension between underlying forces: 

1. Across societies, female speakers tend to use more redress overall and specifically in interactions with other female speakers more positive (solidarity-oriented) redress compared to male speakers and mixed dyads (Brown 1979; Brown & Levinson 1987; Holms 1995). 

2. On the other hand, across societies, ceteris paribus, female speakers are slightly more likely to use more formal/prestigious speech than male speakers of the same age and social status are in the same situation (Hudson 1980; this has more recently been shown to be not necessarily valid in the context of ongoing language change, e.g., Eckert 1988). 

Best — Juergen

Brown, P. (1979). Language, interaction, and sex roles in a Mayan community: a study of politeness and the position of women. Doctoral dissertation, University of California Berkeley.
Brown, P. & S. C. Levinson. (1987). Politeness: Some universals in language use. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Eckert, P. (1988). Adolescent social structure and the spread of linguistic change. Language in Society 17: 183-207.
Hudson, R. (1980/1996). Sociolinguistics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

> On Jan 22, 2020, at 4:55 AM, Haspelmath, Martin <haspelmath at shh.mpg.de> wrote:
> 
> It's nice to hear about these various gender-related markers, but Scott actually asked about a name for a "friendliness/informality" marker. Recall that the two markers in Bodo are dependent on speaker gender, not on addressee gender.
> 
> It seems that languages often encode the type of social setting not only in the lexicon (e.g. choice of formal vs. informal words such as "kids/children"), but also in various grammatical markers, e.g. informal attention particles (e.g. "hey!"), honorific markers on verbs, polite pronouns, diminutives expreasing "endearment". I'm not sure if there is an overarching term for this heterogeneous range of phenomena. (When such markers look like parts of words, they have been treated under "morphopragmatics".)
> 
> It seems that particles that ONLY signal the type of social setting (rather than some other meaning in addition to the social setting) have not often been reported.
> 
> But maybe the Bodo particles can also be taken as signaling the gender of the speaker, as a mirror image of Siva Kalyan's Telugu and Tamil examples, which signal the gender of the addressee, in addition to social setting (informal/intimate/respectful). They could then be called "locutive-politeness" particles, while the Dravidian particles would be "allocutive-politeness" particles. (Taking "politeness" as a shorthand for social setting distinctions such as informal/friendly/intimate/respectful.)
> 
> Martin
> 
> On 22.01.20 09:03, Gilles Authier wrote:
>> 
>> In Tindi (East Caucasian), 
>> 1) (elevationally marked) demonstratives (or presentatives) index the gender of the addressee ; 
>> 2) imperative verb forms can index it, conveying politeness.
>> 
>> ssajħata agja-ra-j zinada r-oo ihwa-qoo.
>> S.(f) here.lower-npl-f cow.pl.nom npl-come.perf shepherd-post.el
>> « Saihat, here are the cows coming from the pasture. »
>> 
>> q'aj b-aχ-a-j!
>> furniture(n) n-take-imper-f
>> "You(f) buy furniture!"
>> 
>> 
>> Gilles Authier
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> On Wed, Jan 22, 2020 at 8:15 AM Michael Daniel <misha.daniel at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Hi.
>> 
>> In Bagvalal, East Caucasian, some particles are indexical of the gender of the addressee. These particles apparently revolve on interactional categories involving the addressee (interrogation, shared knowledge, imperative) but are not (necessarily) referential in the sense indicated by Francoise. As the Basque allocutive, they are on the addressee's side, and not on the speaker's side as in Scott's examples, As far as I understand, this also happens in other East Caucasian languages languages of the Andic branch. See (Kibrik 2001: 174 - Bagvalinskij jazyk: grammatika, teksty, slovari) - a very short but very informative one-page discussion.
>> 
>> Michael Daniel
>> 
>> ср, 22 янв. 2020 г. в 03:30, Siva Kalyan <sivakalyan.princeton at gmail.com>:
>> I would add that allocutive particles in Dravidian languages could be seen as a somewhat open class, which periodically absorbs nouns: e.g. Telugu -ayyā < ayya 'lord', and Tamil =sār < English "sir".
>> 
>> Siva
>> 
>>> On 22 Jan 2020, at 11:23 am, Siva Kalyan <sivakalyan.princeton at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> 
>>> Some Dravidian languages also have allocutive markers (though I've never seen them described as such). Telugu has at least =rā (informal) and -aṇḍi (respectful); Tamil has at least the following:
>>> 	• =ḍā (informal masculine)
>>> 	• =ḍī (informal feminine)
>>> 	• =pā (intimate masculine)
>>> 	• =mā (intimate feminine)
>>> 	• =kā (intimate elder sister)
>>> 	• -ṅga(ḷ) (respectful)
>>> The "intimate" allocutive particles (my terminology) are historically contractions of kin terms (appā 'father', ammā 'mother', akkā 'elder sister'—other kin terms may also contract in this way, but I've only ever heard it with these three, the last one very rarely). Also, =mā and =pā don't exactly line up with female and male addressee, as =mā can also be used by a female speaker to a male addressee; also, =ḍā can be used when speaking to a child regardless of gender.
>>> 
>>> Siva
>>> 
>>>> On 22 Jan 2020, at 8:35 am, Vladimir Panov <panovmeister at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>> 
>>>> Dear Scott,
>>>> 
>>>> Françoise is right about the allocutive. There is a paper by Anton Antonov i which this category is treated typologically:
>>>> 
>>>> Antonov, Anton. 2015. Verbal allocutivity in a crosslinguistic perspective. Linguistic Typology 19(1). 55–85.
>>>> 
>>>> Best,
>>>> Vladimir
>>>> 
>>>> вт, 21 янв. 2020 г. в 12:18, Scott Delancey <delancey at uoregon.edu>:
>>>> Bodo (Tibeto-Burman, NE India) has a set of particles, two used by men and two by women, which indicate that the conversation is friendly and informal. Reminiscent of Thai krap and khaa, but with the opposite sense. Does anyone know if anyone has encountered such a category and given it a label? I need to decide what to call these, and would just as soon not make up a term if someone has already done it.
>>>> 
>>>> Scott DeLancey
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> 
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> Martin Haspelmath (
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