Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

The Logical Principles of Honorification and Dishonorification in Japanese

  • Conference paper
  • First Online:
New Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence (JSAI-isAI 2018)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNAI,volume 11717))

Included in the following conference series:

Abstract

This work develops a comprehensive and systematic analysis of the meanings of Japanese honorifics (honorific expressions), which contrast in terms of whom they “elevate” and “lower” to what extent, and discusses some essential discourse principles regulating their usage.

Thanks to Elin McCready, Osamu Sawada, and the reviewers and audience of LENLS 15 for valuable comments.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution
Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 39.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 54.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Notes

  1. 1.

    Here and thereafter, expressions in small capitals refer to lexemes.

  2. 2.

    The abbreviations in glosses are: Acc \(=\) accusative, Attr \(=\) attributive, Cl \(=\) classifier, Cop \(=\) copula, Dat \(=\) dative, DAux \(=\) discourse auxiliary, DP \(=\) discourse particle, Evid \(=\) evidential auxiliary, Ger \(=\) gerund, Inf \(=\) infinitive, Neg(Aux) \(=\) negation/negative auxiliary, Nom \(=\) nominative, Npfv \(=\) non-perfective auxiliary, Prs \(=\) present, Pst \(=\) past, Th \(=\) thematic wa (topic/ground marker).

  3. 3.

    The appropriate usage of suffixes like san and titles used as “quasi-suffixes”, such as sensei ‘teacher’ and kyooju ‘professor’, has close correlation with honorification. However, with Kikuchi (1997), I will not consider them to be honorific expressions per se.

  4. 4.

    A fuller account of honorification also needs to take into consideration the fact that different honorifics are compatible with different ranges of registers/styles. I put aside this matter in the current work.

References

  • Comrie, B.: Linguistic politeness axes: speaker-addressee, speaker-referent, speaker-bystander. Pragmatic Microfiche 1.7:A3, Department of Linguistics, University of Oxford (1976)

    Google Scholar 

  • Hasegawa, Y.: Japanese: A Linguistic Introduction. Cambrdige University Press, Cambridge (2015)

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Kikuchi, Y.: Keigo [Honorifics]. Kodansha, Tokyo (1997)

    Google Scholar 

  • Kim, J.B., Sells, P.: Korean honorificaiton: a kind of expressive meaning. J. East Asian Linguist. 16, 303–336 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10831-007-9014-4

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • McCready, E.: Honorification and Social Meaning. Oxford University Press, Oxford (forthcoming)

    Google Scholar 

  • Oishi, H.: Keigo [Honorifics]. Chikuma Shobo, Tokyo (1975)

    Google Scholar 

  • Oshima, D.Y.: Perspectives in reported discourse. Ph.D. thesis, Stanford University, Stanford (2006)

    Google Scholar 

  • Oshima, D.Y.: The meanings of perspectival verbs and their implications on the taxonomy of projective content/conventional implicature. Semant. Linguist. Theory (SALT) 26, 43–60 (2016)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Potts, C., Kawahara, S.: Japanese honorifics as emotive definite descriptions. Semant. Linguist. Theory (SALT) 14, 235–254 (2004)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Tonhauser, J., Beaver, D., Roberts, C., Simons, M.: Toward a taxonomy of projective content. Language 89, 66–109 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1353/lan.2013.0001

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Graduate School of Humanities, Nagoya University, Nagoya, 464-8601, Japan

    David Y. Oshima

Authors
  1. David Y. Oshima
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to David Y. Oshima .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology, Ibaraki, Japan

    Kazuhiro Kojima

  2. University of Electro-Communications, Tokyo, Japan

    Maki Sakamoto

  3. Ochanomizu University, Tokyo, Japan

    Koji Mineshima

  4. National Institute of Informatics, Tokyo, Japan

    Ken Satoh

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2019 Springer Nature Switzerland AG

About this paper

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this paper

Oshima, D.Y. (2019). The Logical Principles of Honorification and Dishonorification in Japanese. In: Kojima, K., Sakamoto, M., Mineshima, K., Satoh, K. (eds) New Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence. JSAI-isAI 2018. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 11717. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-31605-1_24

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-31605-1_24

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-31604-4

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-31605-1

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation