[Lingtyp] Query: 'Deceased referent' markers

Fri Sep 27 15:05:20 UTC 2024

Dear All,
speaking of DRM  expressions, we are dealing with an infinite and
interesting  treasure.  In Italian  you have *buonanima*, lit.  ' good soul
', always postposed to the personal name : "*Mario Rossi buonanima*", in a
sense comparable to the Bavarian *selig  *quoted by Frans Pl.. **buonanima
M. R*" is not admitted but *la buonanima di M. R.* is fine. However,
?**Francesco
Petrarca/ Giuseppe Garibaldi buonanima*  would sound very very queer. It
seems that the use of *buonanima *is bound to a reasonably short time after
the passing away, as is pointed out by Denis Cr.  for the Occitan adjective
*paure,* systematically added to personal names when speaking about a
recently deceased person.

Even the Arabic blessing formula "may Allah be merciful with him",
immediately following the personal name,  could be compared with *selig,
buonanima*  as  good wishing expressions.

It would be nice to have a typology of the DRMs !

Best,

Paolo

P.S. *compianto '*late lamented' (lit. cried together) is used  --in a high
,formal style-- as ADJ before the personal name of a person who died more
or less recently:* il compianto Silvio Berluscon*i. It depends on your time
measure !. (see Nigel V.'s note)

Il Ven 27 Set 2024, 14:13 David Gil via Lingtyp <
lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org> ha scritto:

> Dear Denis, all,
>
> My maternal grandmother, a monolingual speaker of a low-SES Jewish London
> dialect of English, had exactly the same usage you describe for the Occitan
> variety, but with English *poor*.
>
> I mention her in particular because I don't think I ever heard this usage
> from other speakers, though my exposure to and familiarity with English
> dialects is rather limited, so I'd be curious to learn how widely spread
> this usage is across English dialects.
>
> Best,
>
> David
>
> On Fri, Sep 27, 2024 at 2:52 PM Denis CREISSELS via Lingtyp <
> lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org> wrote:
>
>> Dear all,
>>
>>
>>
>> In the Occitan variety that was still spoken in my native village when I
>> was a child, the adjective *paure* ['pawre] ‘poor’, but also
>> ‘unfortunate’, was systematically added to personal names when speaking
>> about a recently deceased person.
>>
>>
>>
>> Best,
>>
>> Denis
>>
>>
>>
>> *De :* Lingtyp [mailto:lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org] *De la
>> part de* Epps, Patience L via Lingtyp
>> *Envoyé :* jeudi 26 septembre 2024 12:15
>> *À :* lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org
>> *Objet :* [Lingtyp] Query: 'Deceased referent' markers
>>
>>
>>
>> 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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>>
>
>
> --
>
> David Gil
>
> Senior Scientist (Associate)
> Department of Linguistic and Cultural Evolution
> Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary AnthropologyDeutscher Platz 6, Leipzig, 04103, Germany <https://www.google.com/maps/search/Deutscher+Platz+6,+Leipzig,+04103,+Germany?entry=gmail&source=g>
>
> Email: dapiiiiit at gmail.com
> Mobile Phone (Israel): +972-526117713
> Mobile Phone (Indonesia): +62-082113720302
>
>
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