Ty/Vy oddities?

[Terry Moran]

There may be a remote parallel with how French expresses *Come on, let's
go.*

If you're talking to somebody whom you address as *vous*, you say *Allez
venez*.

But if you're talking to somebody whom you address as *tu*, you don't say *Va
viens*, you say *Allez viens - *putting only one verb in the familiar form,
not both. In this устойчивое словосочетание the word *allez* seems to have
stopped being a verb and become a general-purpose exclamation.

I said it was remote ...

Terry Moran

On 20 September 2014 05:31, Paul B. Gallagher <paulbg at pbg-translations.com>
wrote:

> Mark Nuckols wrote:
>
>  This discussion reminds me of a scene from /Табор уходит в небо/, in
>> which Rada (the lead female role), in the company of female friends,
>> persuades an aristocrat to allow her to drive his coach. She then
>> tells her companions, "Чаяле, залезай!" (Girls, climb in!) The mix of
>> Romani and Russian doesn't concern me, so let's just pretend she said
>> "Девушки, залезай!" with a nominative/vocative plural followed by a
>> second person /singular/ imperative.
>>
>> To give it more context, she and the aristocrat (this is their first
>> meeting) had quickly switched from вы to ты. Given the differences
>> in class, gender and ethnicity, it seems inappropriate for the
>> setting of 1900. At any rate, perhaps Rada then re-establishes the
>> closer relationship with her friends by using the ты form when
>> addressing several of them.
>>
>> That's just my speculation. Native speakers?
>>
>
> I'm not a native speaker -- and perhaps neither is Rada -- but I'd like to
> throw out the following hypothesis:
>
> Just as вы can be used in the polite sense without regard to number, ты
> can also be used in the intimate sense without regard to number. Both
> pronouns have two purposes, and sometimes the intimate/polite contrast
> takes precedence. А вы (один) согласны? ;-)
>
> I may have overdrawn the hypothesis; in my experience, the plural use of
> ты is much rarer than the singular use of вы (I find your example anomalous
> for the language but not for the character). But I still think it bears
> examination.
>
> --
> War doesn't determine who's right, just who's left.
> --
> Paul B. Gallagher
> pbg translations, inc.
> "Russian Translations That Read Like Originals"
> http://pbg-translations.com
>
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------
>  Use your web browser to search the archives, control your subscription
>  options, and more.  Visit and bookmark the SEELANGS Web Interface at:
>                        http://seelangs.wix.com/seelangs
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------
>

-------------------------------------------------------------------------
  Use your web browser to search the archives, control your subscription
  options, and more.  Visit and bookmark the SEELANGS Web Interface at:
                        http://seelangs.wix.com/seelangs
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/seelang/attachments/20140920/3ff509dd/attachment.html>