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Article published In:
Linguistics of the Tibeto-Burman Area
Vol. 46:2 (2023) ► pp.290–327

Emergence of the honorific register in Tibetic languages

ORCID logo | Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
This article presents the first diachronic investigation of the honorific register in Tibetic languages. Although all historically attested Tibetic languages possess at least some rudimentary forms used to convey respect to others, no reconstruction of their origins has been previously attempted. In the article, the distinction is made between primary or simple honorifics and secondary or complex honorifics that are derived from the primary ones. It is argued that primary honorifics evolved from common lexical units by metaphorical extension and, strengthened through their use in ceremonial contexts, were eventually re-interpreted as expressing social deixis, originally with respect to the royal family, later extended to other persons of higher social standing.
Keywords: honorific register, honorification, Old Literary Tibetan, Tibetic languages, language change, metaphoric extension
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
    • 1.1Tibetic languages
    • 1.2Honorific register in Tibetic
    • 1.3Previous hypotheses on the origin of the honorifics
  • 2.Pragmatics of honorification
  • 3.Socio-historical background
    • 3.1Military expansion
    • 3.2Social stratification
  • 4.Non-prototypical use of primary honorifics
    • 4.1Lack of honorific value
    • 4.2Poetic language
    • 4.3Parallelism
    • 4.4Composition
    • 4.5Periphrastic case marking
  • 5.Lexicalisation path
    • 5.1Metaphorical extension
    • 5.2Marked ceremonial usage
    • 5.3Honorification
      • I.Marked ceremonial usage of primary honorifics in postpositional phrases
      • II.Marked social usage of primary honorifics in postpositional phrases with bcan po
      • III.Honorification
  • Conclusions
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • Abbreviations
  • References and sigla
Available under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) 4.0 license.

For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at [email protected].

Published online: 9 November 2023
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/ltba.23010.bia
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