Honorifics without [hon]
Name
11049_2022_Article_9563 corrected.pdf
Description
Corrected version
Size
1.52 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
44883dcf03da96259f0a7fb5fe0254c2
Author(s)
Wang, Ruoan
Date Issued
January 10, 2023
Publisher
Springer Netherlands
Citation
Wang, Ruoan. 2023. "Honorifics without [hon]."
Version
Final published version
Abstract
Abstract
Honorifics are grammaticalized reflexes of politeness, often recruiting existing featural values (e.g. French recruits plural vous for polite address, and German, third person plural Sie). This paper aims to derive their cross-linguistic distribution and interpretation without [hon], an analytical feature present since Corbett (2000). The striking generalization that emerges from a cross-linguistic survey of 120 languages is that only certain featural values are ever recruited for honorification: plural, third person, and indefinite. I show that these values are precisely those which are semantically unmarked, or presuppositionless, allowing the speaker to consider an interlocutor’s negative face (Brown and Levinson 1978). I propose an alternative analysis based on the interaction between semantic markedness, an avoidance-based pragmatic maxim called the Taboo of Directness, and Maximize Presupposition! (Heim 1991) to derive honorific meaning.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Linguistics and Philosophy
Terms of Use
Creative Commons Attribution
Persistent DSpace Link
DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1007/s11049-022-09563-0
