Honorifics in the third person

Started by Prrton, April 02, 2013, 01:39:34 PM

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Prrton


'Eylan Ayfalulukanä raised an interesting question HERE.

I asked about it in the context of the Na'vi belief system and got this in response via e-mail today (02 April 2013):

"I've thought of the honorifics as being first and second person only, mainly for ceremonial use although they inevitably get extended to non-face-to-face contexts. I don't think the Na'vi need honorific third-person pronouns. If talking about rather than to Eywa, they can substitute Nawma Sa'nok for variety. Or maybe even just Sa'nok if the context is clear." —Paul Frommer

So there you have it. There are no 3rd person honorific pronouns. It's official. You can show respect by using the entity's name or a metaphorical title (i.e. by NOT using a pronoun).


Tìtstewan

That was though already mentioned similar?
Quote from: wm.annis on September 17, 2010, 09:31:09 AM
Quote from: Kì'eyawn on September 17, 2010, 09:29:37 AMBut the fact that she said "srung si" and not "srung suyi" means it wasn't in the ceremonial register anyway, kefyak?

Not necessarily.  Frommer has said that you can use the ceremonial forms to set up the ceremonial context, but once used you don't need to keep using them constantly.

Frommer has had ample opportunity to let us know if there were ceremonial 3rd person pronouns.  We haven't seen any so far, so I doubt they exist (now or in the future).  The verb infix can pick up the slack.

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-| Kem si fu kem rä'ä si, ke lu tìfmi. |-

Prrton

I believe that this is the first official confirmation that no parallel forms to ngenga and ohe exist in the 3rd person. It has been a safe assumption up to this point. Now we know that there are no explicit forms and that it's more polite to use a NAME than to use a pronoun to refer to honored people.

:-)

Tìtstewan

Ah! Well, thanks for this info, ma Prrton. :)

-| Na'vi Vocab + Audio | Na'viteri as one HTML file | FAQ | Useful Links for Beginners |-
-| Kem si fu kem rä'ä si, ke lu tìfmi. |-

Plumps

Confirmation is always good.
Thanks for the update, ma Prrton :)