Thank you, Sorry and Please in Cypriot Greek: What happens to politeness markers when they are borrowed across languages?

Terkourafi, Marina

doi:10.1016/j.pragma.2010.07.024

Cited by 32 publications

(26 citation statements)

References 15 publications

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“…This form, pliis, is appropriated from English, but in Finnish has taken on a new identity as a positive politeness marker that can function in ways that kiitos cannot. Similar findings have been demonstrated, for example, with the use please in Cypriot Greek versus the native form parakaló 'please' (Terkourafi 2011 …”

Section: Brought To You By | University Of St Andrews Scotlandsupporting

confidence: 79%

“…For example, Hlavac (2006) offers an overview of the additional function of the Croation form kao, which has taken on the purpose of "filler", apparently due to influence from English like. In a study of the forms thank you, sorry, and please in the context of Cypriot Greek conversation, Terkourafi (2011) discusses what she considers the nativized uses of these forms and how they compare to native Cypriot Greek forms. In addition to the work on pliis in Finnish, investigations of other English sourced discourse markers have also been conducted.…”

Section: Starting Points Of the Studymentioning

confidence: 99%

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Kiitos and pliis: The relationship of native and borrowed politeness markers in Finnish

Peterson¹,

Vaattovaara

2014

Journal of Politeness Research

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The aim of this study was to investigate the use of the native Finnish politeness marker kiitos 'thank you/please' compared to the borrowed politeness marker pliis (from English please). Pliis in Finnish is best characterized as a marked form which is mostly relegated to informal or spoken language. Thus, this stage of our study made use of a grammatical acceptability test to try to observe social evaluation patterns. The test was presented as a web-based survey consisting of 12 grammatical acceptability questions and 6 demographic questions. It was completed by 417 respondents from throughout Finland. The hypothesis was that the function of kiitos could be changing grammatically and semantically. However, the findings indicate that the use of kiitos is more or less unchanged, whereas the use of pliis is likely to be nativizing. The MANOVA analyses indicate that pliis is associated (as a first order index) with young, urban women, and this is also the social group that is more likely to claim use of pliis. The most important finding of the study is that pliis and kiitos seem to be complementary in their distribution; grammatically, pragmatically and in terms of social distinctiveness. We claim that kiitos serves as a marker of negative politeness, whereas pliis serves as a marker of positive politeness.

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Section: Brought To You By | University Of St Andrews Scotlandsupporting

confidence: 79%

Section: Starting Points Of the Studymentioning

confidence: 99%

Kiitos and pliis: The relationship of native and borrowed politeness markers in Finnish

Peterson¹,

Vaattovaara

2014

Journal of Politeness Research

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“…Although the phenomenon to which the term refers had been previously observed (as detailed in Andersen, 2014; see also Terkourafi, 2011), Andersen's article was the first to chronicle the work by himself and other researchers and to legitimize their efforts through the coining of a name for this type of While research on pragmatic borrowing is by no means limited to languages in contact with English, the work detailed by Andersen (2014) investigates pragmatic borrowings from English into other (mostly European) languages, which seems logical, given the role of English as a widespread foreign language and lingua franca throughout much of Europe. Presumably, however, any language serving as a language of prestige in some contexts could qualify as a source of pragmatic borrowings 1 .…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 97%

The nativization of pragmatic borrowings in remote language contact situations

Peterson

2017

Journal of Pragmatics

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This article focuses on the issue of pragmatic borrowing and how it manifests in language contact settings where the language of influence is a nonnative language for the receiving speech community. In this case, the languages under investigation are English and its unidirectional influence on Finnish. The article first establishes the behavior of pragmatic elements in traditional language contact settings, then moves on to problematize the notion within contemporary language contact settings. The article then moves on to specific examples of pragmatic borrowings from English into Finnish, including pliis ('please'), oh my god, and about. The discussion accounts for the social, pragmatic, semantic and grammatical incorporation of these elements into Finnish, demonstrating that the borrowed forms have characteristics which are distinct from both the source language (English) as well as heritage form in the recipient language (Finnish). Included in the discussion of these forms is a proposed trajectory for how such borrowings enter into native discourse, as well as the success vs. failure of pragmatic borrowings in entering mainstream discourse.

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“…Thanking items in Cypriot Greek represent another arena in which the interplay between the Standard variety, Cypriot Greek, and English can be observed in full swing. In an article contrasting the use of thank you, please and sorry borrowed into Cypriot Greek from English with the corresponding inherited Greek terms (e̞ )fxɐriˈsto̞ ('to thank'), sixːoˈɾo̞ ('to forgive') or siˈɣno̞ mi(n) ('pardon'), and pɐɾɐkaˈlo̞ ('to ask/request'), Terkourafi (2011) argued that the latter more frequently serve politeness functions and are used as genuine expressions of the corresponding feelings, while the former tend to perform a variety of discourse functions such as conversational closings, repair, etc. With respect to thanking, she proposed a scale starting with the inflected verb e̞ fxɐriˈsto̞ , followed by invariable e̞ fxɐriˈsto̞ , phonologically truncated fxɐriˈsto̞ and finally ˈθe̞ cʰːu, the nativized rendition of English 'thank you' In this scale, the sequence NP + inflected verb e̞ fxɐriˈsto̞ (+ CP) (see example (1)) is used in the most formal contexts and/or when the speaker's commitment to the illocutionary point expressed is greatest, while, conversely, ˈθe̞ cʰːu is used mostly casually, in informal contexts, and often as a conversational closing (see example (2)).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%