My object of investigation is the grammaticalized
expression of the notion “Speaker (S) wants Hearer
(H) to do something, whereby S requests H´s agreement
for that”, which I will be referring to as the
requestive (see also Kuteva 2009). The requestive as
category is an explication of a notion introduced by
Jespersen ([1925] 1968) and for the first time explicitly
defined in detail in Krabbe (in preparation), who assumes
validity of the following sequence of stages in the
grammaticalization of the verb please into the
politeness adverbial marker please: (i) full
verb (“my words please you”), (ii) conditional
clause with the verb please (“if it pleases
you”), and; (iii) politeness adverbial marker
(“please, open the window”).
In the present investigation I will treat adverbial
politeness markers such as please in English
as dedicated requestive markers, i.e. linguistic expressions
which are specialized for encoding a polite request;
this does not necessarily rule out the existence of
other, non-dedicated means of expressing a polite request
in the same language, cf. the use of a modal verb in
the past in an interrogative sentence in English (e.g.
Could you open the window?).
On the basis of preliminary, empirical observations
from languages spoken in Europe, Africa, Asia and Papua
New Guinea as well as from the communicative behaviour
of the speakers of these languages, I will propose that
there might be a correlation between directness/indirectness
of communication on the one hand, and presence/absence
of dedicated grammaticalized requestives.
More precisely, I will hypothesize that there exist
three major groups of languages as far as grammaticalizing
the requestive notion is concerned:
- Languages with no dedicated grammaticalized
requestives and no other politeness markers (e.g.
Papua New Guinea languages, African languages). The
communication behaviour of the users of such languages
is characterized by directness,
- Languages with dedicated grammaticalized
requestives (and often with additional, non-dedicated,
i.e. multi-purpose linguistic expressions that have
the function of politeness, among other functions,
e.g. English as well as other European languages).
The communication behaviour of the users of such languages
is characterized by moderate directness;
- Languages with no dedicated grammaticalized
requestives but with other politeness markers, which
often amount to a highly elaborate honorific system,
whereby the requestive semantics is distributed –
as a rule – across the whole syntagm containing
the request (e.g. Korean). The communication behaviour
of the users of such languages is characterized by
indirectness.
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