[Lingtyp] Query: 'Deceased referent' markers
Dan I Slobin
slobin at berkeley.edu
Fri Sep 27 20:34:40 UTC 2024
Dear All,
Wikipedia has an overview of the many Jewish expressions following a
reference to the deceased:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honorifics_for_the_dead_in_Judaism.
In my Yiddish-English childhood the common expression was in Hebrew: עליו/עליה
השלום (*alav/aleha ha-shalom) *‘upon him/her peace’. It was
semi-obligatory, muttered in various Yiddish dialects after referring to a
deceased individual in Yiddish or English (“my grandfather ho-óv ha-sholem
used to say…”). The formula remains in use among religious Jews in the
English-speaking world.
Continuing...
Dan
On Fri, Sep 27, 2024 at 8:05 AM Paolo Ramat via Lingtyp <
lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org> wrote:
> 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
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Lingtyp mailing list
>>> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org
>>> https://listserv.linguistlist.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp
>>>
>>
>>
>> --
>>
>> 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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--
*<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> *
*Dan I. Slobin *
*Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Psychology and *
*Distinguished **Affiliated **Professor Emeritus of Linguistics*
*University of California, Berkeley*
*email: slobin at berkeley.edu <slobin at berkeley.edu>*
*https://danslobin.academia.edu/research
<https://danslobin.academia.edu/research>*
*https://archive.org/search?query=Slobin&sin=TXT
<https://archive.org/search?query=Slobin&sin=TXT>*
*address: 2323 Rose St., Berkeley, CA 94708, USA*
*<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> *
*I acknowledge that the UC-Berkeley campus is on the traditional, *
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