POLITENESS DEVICES in the TUVAN LANGUAGE by VITALY

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POLITENESS DEVICES in the TUVAN LANGUAGE by VITALY POLITENESS DEVICES IN THE TUVAN LANGUAGE by VITALY VOINOV Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of The University of Texas at Arlington in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT ARLINGTON May 2013 Copyright © by Vitaly Voinov 2013 All Rights Reserved ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This work would be meaningless and impossible without the blessing of God, who designed human language and cognitive processes to be as wonderful as they are in all of their simultaneous simplicity and complexity. Thanks are due first and foremost to the Creator of all. On a less lofty level, I’m grateful to Laurel Smith Stvan, David Harrison, Joey Sabbagh and Jeff Witzel for their expert guidance as I crafted this dissertation. Likewise, I thank my Tuvan teachers Aldïnay Bin-oolovna Seden-Xuurak and Oksana Vasilyevna Dambaa for giving me a great start on the Tuvan path; the staff at SIL-Oregon for showing me how exciting linguistics is and for encouraging me to get a doctorate in it; David J. Clark and Marianne Beerle-Moor for modeling practical linguistic scholarship; Colleen M. Fitzgerald for her example of dedication to research and service; Jerry Edmondson for his infectious love for languages and for his research endowment; the UTA Graduate School and College of Liberal Arts for generous funding to do my fieldwork, especially Mr. Mustaque Ahmed for his support of the Global Research Graduate Fellows Program; my Tuvan consultants Valeria Kulundary, Nikolay Kuular, Aldïnay Ondar, and Anna Svanes for their patience with my incessant and often weird questions; my Tuvan interview respondents Galina Chaldïg, Todzhana Chamdïgïr, Alonia Choodu, Chinchi Chüldüm-ool, Xüler Chüldüm-ool, Valeria Damba, Sïldïs Kalbak-kïs, Raisa Kechil, Ruslan Küzhüget, Ayas Oorzhak, Saylïkmaa Oorzhak, Artur Oyun, Karïma Oyun, Spartak Oyun, Zoya Oyun, Yana Tandaray, Artyom Xertek, Omak Xorlu, Aydïs Xovalïg, and Aybek Xural-ool, as well as respondents that chose to remain anonymous. The Tuvan people have given me much, much more than I could ever give back. iii It goes without saying that my wonderful wife Oksana and our children deserve the highest praise and gratitude for patiently accepting the long days and months of my academic internment. Thank you for helping me stay sane enough to break through to the other side. Deergi-Burganga aldar! April 12, 2013 iv ABSTRACT POLITENESS DEVICES IN THE TUVAN LANGUAGE Vitaly Voinov, PhD The University of Texas at Arlington, 2013 Supervising Professor: Laurel Smith Stvan Whereas a few core areas of the Tuvan language (such as phonology and morphology) have been fairly well described by linguists, pragmasemantic topics in the language, including politeness, have until now not been probed deeply. Using insights from theories of linguistic politeness proposed by Brown & Levinson (1978, 1987) and by their numerous critics (e.g., Ide 1989; Nwoye 1992; Watts 2003; Lakoff & Ide 2005; LPRG 2011), in this dissertation I investigate the morphosyntactic, pragmatic and sociolinguistic aspects of some of the primary verbal means that Tuvans use in conversation to express politeness to each other. The language material is based on a corpus of Tuvan literature, fieldwork questionnaires, and my individual contact with Tuvan speakers over the past decade. I first explore emic perceptions that native Tuvan speakers have of what politeness means in Tuvan society: how Tuvans themselves metalinguistically characterize and v categorize politeness behavior, what social norms they believe to be primary in generating it, and their evaluation of the current level of politeness versus impoliteness in Tuva. Following this, I examine politeness devices that Tuvans use to manage face threats from an etic standpoint, separately looking at devices based on norms of social indexing and involving group face (Nwoye 1992) and those based on the desire for non-imposition and individual face (Brown & Levinson 1987). Specific devices that I investigate in detail include respectful pronouns, deferential terms of address, indirect speech acts, polite auxiliary verbs and politeness particles. Although genuine politeness is the primary focus of the dissertation, the investigation also touches upon closely related issues, such as rudeness, overpoliteness and mock politeness. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ..................................................................................……………..iii ABSTRACT ............................................................................................................................... v LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS ..................................................................................................... xi LIST OF TABLES.................................................................................................................... xii GLOSSING CONVENTIONS................................................................................................. xiv Chapter Page 1. INTRODUCTION AND LITERATURE REVIEW……………..………..….. ........... .1 1.1 Background on Tuva and Tuvan Language Studies...................................... .1 1.2 Theories of Linguistic Politeness ................................................................. .5 1.2.1 The Early History of Classical Politeness Theories........................ 5 1.2.2 The Brown & Levinson Model...................................................... 6 1.2.3 Reactions to the Brown & Levinson Model................................. 10 1.2.4 Response to Criticisms of the Brown & Levinson Model............. 16 1.2.4.1 Response to Criticisms on First- Versus Second-order Politeness................................................................................ 17 1.2.4.2 Response to Criticisms Based on Group Face Versus Individual Face in Politeness................................................... 18 1.2.4.3 Response to Criticism of B&L’s Utterance-based Approach................................................................................ 27 1.3 The Study of Politeness in the Turkic Languages....................................... .32 1.4 Motivation, Goals and Limitations of Present Study ................................... 34 1.5 Description of Data Sources ...................................................................... .37 vii 1.5.1 Corpus Work .............................................................................. 38 1.5.1.1 Annotation .................................................................. 42 1.5.2 Fieldwork ................................................................................... 42 1.5.2.1 Stage 1 Questionnaire.................................................. 42 1.5.2.2 Stage 2 Questionnaire/Interview .................................. 44 1.5.3 Individual Contact with Tuvan Consultants ................................. 46 1.6 Outline of the Rest of This Dissertation ...................................................... 47 2. EMIC PERCEPTIONS OF POLITENESS IN TUVAN SOCIETY .......................... 48 2.1 Introduction ............................................................................................... 48 2.2 An Expanded Tuvan Definition of Politeness ............................................. 50 2.3 Terms in Tuvan Semantic Field of Politeness ............................................. 52 2.3.1 Evileŋ-eeldek .............................................................................. 52 2.3.2 Xündüleečel ................................................................................ 54 2.3.3 Čïmčak ....................................................................................... 58 2.4 Emic Terms Related to ‘Face’ in Tuvan...................................................... 61 2.4.1 Arïn ‘visage’ ............................................................................. 62 2.4.2 At ‘name’ ................................................................................... 63 2.5 ‘Golden Words’ and Speech Acts ............................................................... 65 2.6 Differential Treatment According to Relative Age...................................... 72 2.7 Other Tuvan Sayings About Politeness/Respect.......................................... 75 2.8 Perceptions of Impoliteness in Tuvan Society............................................. 77 3. TUVAN POLITENESS DEVICES BASED ON GROUP FACE ............................. 88 3.1 Introduction ............................................................................................... 88 3.2 Tuvan Pronouns: The Politeness of Plurality............................................... 95 viii 3.2.1 Repluralized Pronouns ................................................................ 98 3.2.1.1 Examples and Interpretations of Honorific RPs.......... 104 3.2.1.2 Examples of Non-honorific RPs ................................ 108 3.2.2 Dialectal Variation in T/V/V2 Pronoun Use............................... 110 3.3 Terms of Address ..................................................................................... 116 3.3.1 Non-kin Terms.......................................................................... 118 3.3.2 Kin Terms and Polite Name Avoidance..................................... 123 3.3.2.1 Fictive Kin Terms...................................................... 131 3.4 Interaction Between Polite Pronouns and Deferential Address Terms ....... 140 4. TUVAN POLITENESS DEVICES BASED ON INDIVIDUAL FACE.................. 144 4.1 Introduction ............................................................................................
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