[Lingtyp] Query: 'Deceased referent' markers

Thu Sep 26 23:36:28 UTC 2024

Dear Pattie,

The French equivalent of Eng. *late* is a form *feu*, which precedes an NP,
whether a proper name or a phrase:

   - *J'ai connu feu ton père.  *“I used to know your late father.”
   - *C'est la maison de feu Bernard Hervé. *“This is the house of the late
   Bernard Hervé”  [fictitious name]

The form is stylistically marked these days, of a legal or literary ~
higher register. (It is therefore excluded from Pattie's request; but maybe
worth mentioning anyway.)

In texts, there is historical variation between an earlier adjectival use [*le
feu roi*] and a later pattern {*feu* +NP} [*feu le roi*].

The French form *feu* happens to be homophonous with the noun *feu* 'fire'
🔥🔥 This surely triggers some mental associations between the two notions,
in the perception of many French speakers (cf. the puns in this newspaper
entry
<https://www.lefigaro.fr/langue-francaise/actu-des-mots/2017/12/08/37002-20171208ARTFIG00007-feufeu-n-m-se-dit-de-quelqu-un-qui-s-est-eteint.php>,
about
a singer who passed away in 2017).

However, the homophony is accidental. While the fire noun *feu* comes from
Lat. *focus* 'hearth' (cf. Ital. *fuoco*), the 'deceased' word reflects a
Medieval Latin adjective **fatutus* 'who has met their fate' — itself
derived from *fātum* 'destiny, fate'.

I wonder if *fatutus, or French *feu*, could in fact also be the source of
Italian *fu* mentioned by Paolo (*il fu Mattia Pascal*). If that *fu* does
reflect Lat. *fuit* [3sg perfectum of 'be'] as Paolo suggests, the
similarity with French *feu* would be a coincidence;  but the position of
*fu*, between the article and the noun, suggests an adjectival origin
rather than verbal.
_______

The plural of *feu* is *feus* (*nos feus parents*) — contrasting with the
plural *feux* of the 🔥 noun *feu*.
The word has a feminine *feue *:  *feue la Reine* "the late Queen", from
*fatuta.

There used to be complex rules of agreement in number & gender, depending
on the degree of grammaticalisation:
one would write *la feue Reine* (archaic, adjectival use), but *feu la
Reine* (when reinterpreted as a non-inflecting particle).
Those rules are still taught in prescriptive contexts, e.g. on this page
<https://www.btb.termiumplus.gc.ca/tpv2guides/guides/clefsfp/index-fra.html?lang=fra&lettr=indx_catlog_f&page=9wRyescDdDRo.html>
of an official Canadian website.

See also the entry FEU, FEUE <https://www.cnrtl.fr/definition/feu> in the
CNRTL dictionary of French [→ second tab on the page]
[image: image.png]
According to that entry, a spelling reform in 1901 simplified the
orthographic rules by promoting number & gender agreement with the noun, in
all cases (→ *la feue Reine* / *feue la Reine*).
_______

Finally, an interesting question, both when describing French *feu* and
when doing a typology of similar forms, would be to find out in what
precise contexts it is *pragmatically appropriate* to use deceased referent
markers.

For example, I don't believe it would be natural to say ??{*We visited the
house of the late Frédéric Chopin*}. Or perhaps this could be said, but
would bear some particular connotations (perhaps some sense of personal
affection towards this composer?).

One could think that the criteria may include whether the death is 1/
"recent", and~or 2/ new information to the hearer. But I don't think this
captures the whole story. This year I heard a politician speak of  *feu le
Général de Gaulle*, even though he died in 1970 (not so recent), and that
was not new information to the audience.  Perhaps relevant was the fact
that the referent is of living memory, i.e. there are still some people who
remember when de Gaulle was alive.  It's like you use *feu* (or Eng. *late*?)
only if you want to underline a personal connection between yourself, or
your community, and the deceased referent.  In the case of the politician,
the undertext was "*The late Général, whom many of us knew and admired
during our lifetimes, would disapprove of the current political situation
if he were still among us today.*"  This would not work with Napoléon, I
think.

Conversely, a death that is really recent, or informationally foregrounded,
would not be a suitable context for using the marker:
??{*Many were killed in the plane crash, including the late pilot*}.

In sum, I'd be curious to know if the pragmatics of using "deceased
referent" markers tend to be cross-linguistically recurrent, or if they
differ across languages and cultures.  Pattie's description suggests that
the contexts of use, and frequency, differ between Europe and the Amazon,
but I wonder in what ways.

best
Alex
------------------------------

Alex François
LaTTiCe <http://www.lattice.cnrs.fr/en/alexandre-francois/> — CNRS–
<https://www.cnrs.fr/en>ENS
<https://www.ens.fr/laboratoire/lattice-langues-textes-traitements-informatiques-et-cognition-umr-8094>
–PSL <https://www.psl.eu/en>–Sorbonne nouvelle
<http://www.univ-paris3.fr/lattice-langues-textes-traitements-informatiques-cognition-umr-8094-3458.kjsp>
Australian National University
<https://researchers.anu.edu.au/researchers/francois-a>
Personal homepage <http://alex.francois.online.fr/>
_________________________________________

---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: Paolo Ramat via Lingtyp <lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>
Date: Thu, 26 Sept 2024 at 16:00
Subject: Re: [Lingtyp] Query: 'Deceased referent' markers
To: 양재영 <tastymango at snu.ac.kr>
Cc: Epps, Patience L <pattieepps at austin.utexas.edu>,
lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org <lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>

Dear Pattie,
 the title of a novel by the Nobel Prize winner 1934 Luigi Pirandello * is
Il fu Mattia Pascal ,*whereby* fu (*< Lat. *fuit *3rd sg of the perfect),
preceded by the ART* il, *has exactly the same adjectival function as Engl*.
late *or Port.* finado, *both preceded by ART.
An NP such as* *I fu Mattia e Giovanni *would be ungrammatical, since
*fu *wouldn't
agree with the plural *Mattia + Giovanni *(though     *I* *furono (*<
Lat. *fuerunt
*3rd plur. of the perfect) *Mattia e Giov. * would sound very strange: *Fu,
*still used in NPs such as *Il fu Mattia Pascal* , is a
stereotyped formula, just as the corresponding Engl. and Port. expressions.

Best wishes,
P.Rt.

Prof. Dr. Paolo Ramat
Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, Socio corrispondente
'Academia Europaea'
'Societas Linguistica Europaea', Honorary Member
Università di Pavia (retired)
Istituto Universitario di Studi Superiori (IUSS Pavia) (retired)

piazzetta Arduino 11 - I 27100 Pavia
##39 0382 27027
347 044 98 44

Il giorno gio 26 set 2024 alle ore 13:08 양재영 via Lingtyp <
lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org> ha scritto:

> Dear Pattie Epps,
>
> Tübatulabal (Uto-Aztecan, California) uses a nominal ‘past tense’ suffix
> -pï- to mark the death of a person (including kins).
>
> The language also has a suffix -bai’i- that is used with a kinship term to
> indicate the kin being referred to is the last surviving one, and a few
> other interesting phenomena of expressing the death of the ‘connecting
> relative’.
>
> Reference:
> Voegelin, Charles F. 1935. Tübatulabal Grammar. University of California
> Press.
>
> Best regards,
> Jaeyeong Yang
>
> 2024년 9월 26일 (목) 오후 7:30, Pun Ho Lui via Lingtyp <
> lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>님이 작성:
>
>> Dear Pattie Epps,
>>
>> Narragansett (Algic) is claimed to have a suffix called “absentative”
>> which can encode a deceased person or lost possessions, e.g. nókac-i ‘my
>> late deceased mother’ (mother-ABSENTATIVE).
>>
>> Reference:
>>
>> O’Brien, Frank Waabu. 2009. Grammatical Studies in the Narragansett
>> Language (Second Edition). Aquidneck Indian Council.
>>
>>
>> Warmest,
>>
>> *Pun Ho Lui Joe*
>>
>> Epps, Patience L via Lingtyp <lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org> 於
>> 2024年9月26日 下午6:14 寫道：
>>
>> Dear all,
>>
>> I'm writing regarding a phenomenon that appears to be widely attested in
>> Amazonian languages, which my project collaborators and I have been calling
>> a 'deceased referent marker'. We are wondering about the extent to which a
>> comparable phenomenon exists in other languages of the world - from a
>> preliminary survey, it appears to have very few close correlates elsewhere.
>>
>> The Amazonian-type DRM construction involves using a particular
>> linguistic marker (which can usually be identified as more grammatical than
>> lexical, though it's not always an easy distinction to make) within the
>> noun phrase when making direct reference to a deceased referent. This is
>> reminiscent of what occurs in some European languages (e.g. English
>> *the late John, *Portuguese *o finado João*), but tends to be less
>> lexical and is ubiquitous in discourse, rather than being highly optional
>> and/or limited to more formal registers. In some languages, the DRM is a
>> distinct etymon with no other functions; in others, it overlaps with other
>> functions (most frequently that of a nominal past marker). It is always
>> used with humans (primarily proper names and kin terms), while some
>> languages also allow use with non-human referents. In spite of these
>> variations, there seem to be close parallels in how the construction is
>> formulated and how it is used discursively across many Amazonian languages.
>>
>> An example from Nadëb (Naduhup family, NW Brazil):
>> *ee           makũuh              ỹ              haw'ëëh              doo
>>                        paah*
>> father  DRM                       1sg         raise
>> NMLZ                    PST
>> 'It was my late father who raised me (there).'
>>
>> In defining the Amazonian 'type' of DRM, we are focusing on resources
>> that a) consist of a morphological element (affix or clitic hosted by the
>> noun); or b) if arguably more lexical, have a ‘deceased referent’ function
>> that is relatively distinct from other meanings/morphosyntactic expressions
>> and/or appears ubiquitously in DRM contexts. We are excluding other kinds
>> of linguistic strategies for referring to the deceased, including naming
>> prohibitions, necronyms (passing on the deceased's name to a child), more
>> pragmatically optional periphrastic strategies (e.g. 'my dead relative',
>> 'my relative who died recently', etc.). We are also excluding (though we're
>> interested, for comparative purposes) other types of nominal morphology
>> relating to the deceased, e.g. a marker that occurs with a kin term X to
>> mean ‘one whose X has recently died’ in Kayardild (Australia):
>> *kangku-kurirr* (father’s.father-DEAD) ‘one whose father’s father has
>> recently died’ (Evans 1995: 197).
>>
>> We'd be very grateful for information about comparable phenomena in
>> languages outside South America.
>>
>> All best,
>> Pattie Epps
>>
>>
>>
>>
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