In linguistics, an honorific (abbreviated HON) is a grammatical or morphosyntactic form that encodes the relative social status of the participants of the conversation.
Distinct from honorific titles, linguistic honorifics convey formality FORM, social distance, politeness POL, humility HBL, deference, or respect through the choice of an alternate form such as an affix, clitic, grammatical case, change in person or number, or an entirely different lexical item.
A fourth type, the Speaker/Situation honorific, does not concern the status of any participant or bystander, but the circumstances and environment in which the conversation is occurring.
A third lexical option is added to the honorific scheme: o senhor and a senhora (literally meaning "sir" and "madam", which are third-person references that are used in direct address (that would "normally" require the second person tu or você).
The use of tu, tum and aap in Hindi and Urdu, or their cognates in other languages (e.g. Bengali tui, tumi and aapni), indicates increasing levels of formality or social status of the addressee.
The higher honorific level includes "compound" pronouns consisting of prefixal pan or pani in conjunction with professional titles.
Poland's history of nobility was the major source for Polish politeness, which explains how the honorific male-marked pronoun pan (pani is female-marked) was derived from the old word for "lord."
The intimate T form is marked as neutral when used reciprocally between children, relatives, students, soldiers and young people.
[5] Native Russian speakers usually know when to use the informal second person singular pronoun (ty) or the formal form (vy).
[citation needed] It has been suggested that the origin of vy-address came from the Roman Empire and the French due to the influence of their language and culture on the Russian aristocracy.
[citation needed] The younger generation and commoners, with minimal education still address each other using ty with no connotation of disrespect, however.
[6][citation needed] In French the singular form 'tu' is used in intimate and informal speech, as well as "speaking down", as adults to children (but never "up").
Modern English has no grammatical system of honorific speech, with formality and informality being conveyed entirely by register, word choice, tone, rhetorical strategy, etc.
In this honorific system, a speaker switches to a different variety of speech in the presence of an in-law or other relative for whom an affinal taboo exists.
[9] This mother-in-law language has the same phonology and grammar as the everyday style, but uses an almost totally distinct set of lexemes when in the presence of the tabooed relative.
In Guugu-Yimidhirr, a traditional Australian Aboriginal language, special avoidance lexemes are used to express deference when in the presence of tabooed in-law relatives.
In Mortlock culture, there are many restrictions and rules when interacting with people of the opposite gender, such as how only males are allowed to go fishing or how women are supposed to lower their posture in the presence of men.
Meanwhile, 您 (nín) which arose from the contraction of plural second-person pronoun 你们 (nǐ mén) is used in formal situations.
Before the New Culture Movement which occurred right after the end of the Qing dynasty, the language had an elaborate system of honorifics, and different expressions were used depending on the societal position of the speaker and listener, politeness, and deference.
Another subcategory of keigo is bikago or bika-hyōgen, which means "word beautification" and is used to demonstrate the quality of the speaker's language.
Speech levels, although not as developed or as complex as honorific speech found in Japanese, are but one of a complex and nuanced aspect of Javanese etiquette: etiquette governs not only speaking but, "sitting, speaking, standing, pointing, composing one's countenance"[17][18] and one could add mastery of English and Western table manners.
[19] According to Wolfowitz, as quoted in Ingold (2002):[20] "The system is based on sets of precisely ranked or style-coded morphemes that are semantically equivalent but stylistically contrastive" important is an honorific vocabulary referring to the possessions, attributes, states and actions of persons, a vocabulary that includes honorific kin terms.
Such speech pattern is especially more pronounced in areas where arranged marriage are prominent and within households where the husband is considerably older than the wife.
In fact, in Japan, although this is limited to intimate relationships in private, there are many cases where students do not use honorifics towards their teachers at school.
The current Korean custom of deciding whether to use honorifics based on age in Korea was influenced by Japanese colonial occupation era.
According to Strauss and Eun, the two honorific speech levels are "prototypically used among non-intimate adults of relatively equal rank".
Comparatively, the non-honorific speech levels are typically used between intimates, in-group members, or in "downward directions of address by the speaker to his or her interlocutor.
"[34] The Nahuatl language, spoken in scattered communities in rural areas of Central Mexico, utilizes a system of honorific speech to mark social distance and respect.
The construction of possessive classifiers depends on ownership, temporality, degrees of control, locative associations, and status.
Tungoal 'food/eating' is used for all categories of low-status possessives; however, the most widely used high-status classifier, sapwelline 'land/hand' is not semantically connected to food.