476 Chapter 15 Speech levels
(12) Apa le'er-ra ba'na gi' sake'?
what neck-DEF you still hurt
‘Does your neck still hurt?’
By comparison, when the person referred to is someone to be shown respect,
such as a king, some different lexical choices are required.
(13) Rato la ta' songkan pole gulu-na.
king already not hurt again neck-DEF
‘The King’s neck does not hurt anymore.’
In (11-12), the word le'er is used to denote ‘neck’ and nganglo to denote ‘hurt’.
In describing the king, gulu denotes ‘neck’ and songkan denotes ‘hurt’. The
lexical choice is triggered solely by the fact that the person being referred to,
rato, is someone of higher social status, someone to be honored and accorded
respect. Gulu and songkan are alos tenggi words. Note that the aspectual adverb
la ‘already’ and the definite morpheme na are unaffected by the status of the
subject. This indicates that no status difference between speaker and addressee
is being recognized or that the speaker is of a higher status than the addressee;
thus, kasar speech is appropriate.
The same sentences in alos speech are given in (14-16), in which, for
example, the speaker may be addressing a parent, teacher, or older person.
(14) Le'er-epon kaula ampon ta' ng-anglo pole.
neck-DEF I already not AV-hurt again
‘My neck doesn’t hurt anymore.’
(15) Ponapa gulu-epon panjennengngan gi' songkan?
what neck-DEF you still hurt
‘Does your neck still hurt?’
(16) Rato ampon ta' songkan pole gulu-epon.
king already not hurt again neck-DEF
‘The King’s neck does not hurt anymore.’
In comparing (11) and (14), it is clear that some of the lexical items used are the
same in the two variants and some are different. In both (11) and (14), le'er is
used for ‘neck’, a word that refers to the possessions, body parts, or state of the
person being described; words that were paired with alos tenggi word gulu in
(13). Even though in (14) the addressee is a social superior of the speaker, the
referent of the state is not someone to be honored (alos tenggi words are never
used to refer to oneself); therefore, alos tenggi vocabulary is not appropriate.
However, the definite marker -epon, the first person pronoun kaula, the tempor-