Use of the vocabularies 475
(10) Alos
Sampeyan ponapa lastare neddha?
you what finish AV.eat
‘Have you eaten?’
In (8) and (10), the kasar and alos variants are lexically completely discrete. The
personal pronouns (ba'na and sampeyan ‘you’), question particles (apa and
ponapa ‘what’), aspectual predicates (mare and lastare ‘finish’), and main
verbs (ngakan and adha'ar ‘eat’) are all drawn from their respective vocabula-
ries. In the tengnga'an variant (9), tengnga'an-specific words dika ‘you’ and
nape ‘what’ are employed. However, there is no unique tengnga'an lexical item
for the aspectual predicate or the main predicate. Here, the kasar words mare
and ngakan are used, rather than using alos word, as was illustrated with the
auxiliary predicate olle ‘get/allow’ in (6).
The distinction between drawing vocabulary from alos versus kasar indi-
cates the degree to which the speaker wishes to show respect to the addressee.
Using alos vocabulary, as in (6), signals the speaker’s desire to be more polite,
while drawing from kasar, as in (9), signals the speaker’s desire to be somewhat
more intimate or informal or to indicate a sense of slight social superiority of
the speaker. As discussed in section 2.3, drawing lexical items from the differ-
ent lexical sets allows a speaker to create gradations that indicate fine-tuning of
the social context.
2.2 Alos tenggi and alos mandhap
Cross-cutting the vocabularies sensitive to the respective social status of the
speaker and addressee are the vocabularies sensitive to the status of the persons
who are the participants in the state of affairs being discussed. The effects of
this will be illustrated with examples from kasar and alos speech.
The kasar sentences in (11) and (12) illustrate the different lexical choices
made when the person referred to does not require respectful vocabulary. These
sentences might be used among friends.^5
(11) Tang le'er la ta' sake' pole.
my neck already not hurt again
‘My neck doesn’t hurt anymore.’
(^5) For some speakers it is possible to substitute anglo 'hurt', an alos word, for sake' in
(10) and (11). Others consider anglo to be alos mandhap, as it will be treated here in
example (13).