Ty/Vy oddities?

[Natalie Kononenko]

I actually find number 1 easier to explain.  The speaker is seeking to
establish intimacy with the audience, to get him or her to feel more
involved with what is being presented.  So the speaker uses the singular
and the familiar.  And, because this is addressed to an entire group, the
use of "ty" is not taken as the speaker being rude or inappropriately
familiar.

Natalie

On Fri, Sep 19, 2014 at 9:18 AM, Alina Israeli <aisrael at american.edu> wrote:

> The second one is easier to explain. It is not exactly "reported speech"
> but "processed reported speech", so the speaker stays aware from beginning
> to end that they are talking to HIM and he gets into the skin of the
> speaker who talks to him. So it is as if he himself became the speaker who
> addressed him, and he cannot address himself with VY.
>
> The first one is more difficult particularly without exact data. This is
> probably lower social class speaker and he uses ONE listener in the crowd
> to stand for the crowd, as if he spoke to one person. It adds a narrative
> element to the story, because he brings the listener in. Обобщенно-личное 2
> p sg, and sometimes pl (Turgenev had some examples of that) while speaking
> of oneself serves the same purpose supposedly.
>
> Alina
>
> On Sep 19, 2014, at 7:46 AM, Richard Robin <rrobin at EMAIL.GWU.EDU> wrote:
>
> Dear SEELANGS readers,
>
> Over the past 25 years I very occasionally have heard two types of ты/вы
> oddities (odd to me, at least). I wonder if someone can tell me whether
> these are total anomalies, or whether I was just imagining things.
>
> 1.  Collective ты for вы. At a party, someone tells a story and addresses
> the entire group as ты, e.g. И это всё! Но если *ты* хочешь знать
> подробности, я расскажу всё. (The substance of the conversation is made up;
> I can’t remember it unfortunately — just the use of the explicit personal
> pronoun ты, which suggests that this was *not* the impersonal ты -
> equivalent to the English “yuh,” the informal “one.” (I always tell my
> students, for “yuh” drop the ты unless in non-nominative.) I admit that I
> heard this only on two or three occasions. But the pronoun ты was quite
> prominent, and it was crystal clear that the entire group was being
> addressed. All were on ты with each other.
>
> 2.  (Even more unexplainable): Ты for вы in reported speech, something
> like this:
> Вот я был в турагентстве, меня спрашивают, А у тебя есть загранпаспорт?
> Отвечаю, С собой нет. Они: Тогда вернись с заграном.
> Again, I’m making up the exchange unfortunately. But the use of ты in
> reported speech for what would have been a вы conversation seems to be
> common (and optional?) I should mention, that again, in each case the
> story-teller and the listeners were on ты with each other.
>
> Any comments from NSs or sociolinguists? I’m sorry I don’t have exact
> data. I usually don’t pull out voice recorders at parties. But these
> questions have been bugging me since 1990.
>
> Richard Robin
>
>
> --
> Richard M. Robin, Ph.D.
> Director Russian Language Program
> Academy of Distinguished Teachers
> The George Washington University
> Washington, DC 20052
> 202-994-7081
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-- 
Natalie Kononenko
Kule Chair in Ukrainian Ethnography
University of Alberta
200 Arts Building
Edmonton AB Canada T6G 2E6
780-492-6810
http://www.artsrn.ualberta.ca/folkloreukraine/
http://www.artsrn.ualberta.ca/Shkola/
http://ukrainealive.ualberta.ca

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