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The Semantics and Pragmatics of the Japanese Honorific Titles San, Kun, and Chan

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New Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence (JSAI-isAI 2021)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNAI,volume 13856))

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Abstract

This work discusses the semantics, pragmatic effects, and usage of the three “honorific titles” (honorific expressions typically attached to a name) in Japanese: san, kun, and chan. It will be argued that kun and chan convey a lower degree of respect than san does, and that due to this feature, they (i) often signal intimacy and endearment (without conventionally encoding such information) and (ii) are usually preferentially applied, instead of san, to children. It will also be proposed that there are two variants each of kun and chan, one unmarked and one marked. While the unmarked variety of kun is applied exclusively to male referents, the marked variety is neutral as to the referent’s gender but instead conveys that the speaker and the referent stand in the relation of colleagueship in a broad sense. As for chan, while its unmarked variety indicates that the referent is a child or a female, the marked variety is not subject to this constraint.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Subscript s indicates a surname, m indicates a given name referring to a male, and f indicates a given name referring to a female. The abbreviations in glosses are: Acc \(=\) accusative, AddrHon \(=\) addressee(-oriented) honorific, ARG1Hon \(=\) ARG1 (subject-oriented) honorific, Attr \(=\) attributive, BenAux \(=\) benefactive auxiliary, Cop \(=\) copula, Dat \(=\) dative, DAux \(=\) discourse auxiliary, DP \(=\) discourse particle, EvidP \(=\) evidential particle, F \(=\) given name of a female, Gen \(=\) genitive, Ger \(=\) gerund, Imp \(=\) imperative, Inf \(=\) infinitive, Intj \(=\) interjection, M \(=\) given name of a male, NegAux \(=\) negative auxiliary, Nom \(=\) nominative, NpfvAux \(=\) non-perfective auxiliary, Prs \(=\) present, Pst \(=\) past, Psup \(=\) presumptive, Psv \(=\) passive, Sn \(=\) surname, Th \(=\) thematic wa (topic/ground marker), Top \(=\) topic marker, Vol \(=\) volitional.

  2. 2.

    San, kun, and chan may also be used with a common noun or the name of an organization, as in (i), or form a nickname with an abbreviation of a (family or given) name, as in (ii).

    1. (i)

      [bengoshi ‘lawyer’ \(+\) san] ‘Mr./Ms. Lawyer’; [megane ‘glasses’ \(+\) kun] ‘the guy with glasses’ (somewhat pejorative); [wan ‘bowwow’ \(+\) chan] ‘doggie’

    2. (ii)

      Yanagiba\(_s\) \(+\) san \(\Rightarrow \) Gibasan; Atsushi\(_m\) \(+\) kun \(\Rightarrow \) Akkun; Noriko\(_f\) \(+\) chan \(\Rightarrow \) Norichan, Nonchan

    This work will not discuss further san/kun/chan occurring with an item other than a (complete) name.

  3. 3.

    In Oshima (2019, 2021), (8) is paired with another principle complementing it, called Reverence Maximization (Form). This second principle amounts to saying that when respect toward a certain party can be expressed within a single lexical item with more than one type of honorific expression (e.g., an addressee honorific and an ARG1 honorific), it must. It is not of relevance to the current paper, which focuses on one type of honorific expression (i.e. honorific ADTs).

  4. 4.

    (i) sounds more respectful than (12a), and more or less as respectful as (12b).

    1. (i)

      Kojima\(_s\) kyooju   ga     pasokon   o      kawareta.

      Sn professor Nom   PC         Acc     buy.ARG1Hon.Pst

      ‘(Professor) Kojima\(_s\) bought a PC.’

    This cannot be attributed to the RMC principle, as kyooju does not directly encode honorific meaning (see Sect. 2) and conveys (as a not-at-issue content) merely that the referent is a professor. This implies that some additional discourse principle, which (i) favors an occupation-based ADT and (ii) is potentially at odds with the RMC principle, needs to be postulated to account for why some non-honorific—or quasi-honorific—ADTs such as kyooju may “win over”, or “tie with”, honorific ones. A full discussion of the competition between honorific and non-honorific ADTs, however, is beyond the scope of the current work.

  5. 5.

    As mentioned above, contemporary speakers generally do not apply honorifics to members of their families, including elderly ones. This pattern seems open to two interpretations. The first is that members of the same family perceive each other as more or less equally ranked. The second is that, although family members may perceive of each other as differently ranked, the extreme intimacy between them leads them to assign very low honorific values to each other.

  6. 6.

    This practice has been questioned by some, considered to go against the principle of gender equality/inclusivity (Hayashi & Oshima 2021).

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Oshima, D.Y. (2023). The Semantics and Pragmatics of the Japanese Honorific Titles San, Kun, and Chan. In: Yada, K., Takama, Y., Mineshima, K., Satoh, K. (eds) New Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence. JSAI-isAI 2021. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 13856. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-36190-6_12

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