Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Honorifics, Grounds and Ideologies

  • Conference paper
  • First Online:
New Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence (JSAI-isAI 2021)

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

Included in the following conference series:

  • 163 Accesses

Abstract

This paper discusses the notion of grounds using honorifics as a main example case. Grounds are ‘global’ assumptions that are essential for the use of particular linguistic items or constructions. They differ from other meaning categories in various ways, for example differing from presupposition in that they are sufficiently large, complex, and even ineffable as to be essentially unaccommodatable. Certain grounds of honorifics are presented together with several other examples and some implications of the analysis discussed.

Thanks to the audience of LENLS 2022 for interesting and helpful discussion, and to audiences at the 2022 Deutschen Gesellschaft für Sprachwissenschaft and the 22nd Szklarska Poreba Workshop on the Roots of Pragmasemantics.

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 64.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 84.99
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.

    The last principle, (D), seems extendable to a converse position, ie. that one need not exhibit any kind of politeness behavior to perceived social inferiors, but this is a kind of behavior idiosyncratic to badly behaved individuals and probably doesn’t ground the actual use of honorifics.

  2. 2.

    Here ‘Mx’ indicates an ungendered honorific suffix.

References

  • Agha, A.: Honorification. Annu. Rev. Anthropol. 23, 277–302 (1994)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Beaver, D.: Presupposition. In: Handbook of Logic and Language, pp. 939–1008. Elsevier (1997)

    Google Scholar 

  • Beaver, D.: Presupposition and Assertion in Dynamic Semantics. Number 16 in Studies in Logic, Language and Information. CSLI/FoLLI, Stanford, CA (2001)

    Google Scholar 

  • Beaver, D., Zeevat, H.: Accommodation. In: Ramchand, G., Reiss, C., (eds.), Oxford Handbook of Linguistic Interfaces. Oxford (2007)

    Google Scholar 

  • Camp, E.: Slurring perspectives. Anal. Philos. 54(3), 330–349 (2013)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Carlson, G., Spejewski, B.: Generic passages. Nat. Lang. Seman. 5, 101–165 (1997)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Chierchia, G.: Reference to kinds across language. Nat. Lang. Seman. 6, 339–405 (1998). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1008324218506

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Davis, C., McCready, E.: The instability of slurs. Grazer Philosophische Studien 97, 63–85 (2020)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Heim, I., Kratzer, A.: Semantics in Generative Grammar. Number 13 in Blackwell Textbooks in Linguistics. Blackwell, Oxford, England (1998)

    Google Scholar 

  • Henderson, R., McCready, E.: Signaling without Saying: The Semantics and Pragmatics of Dogwhistles. Oxford University Press (2021a to appear)

    Google Scholar 

  • Henderson, R., McCready, E.: Dogwhistles: Persona and ideology. To appear in Semantics and Linguistic Theory 31 (2021b)

    Google Scholar 

  • McCready, E.: Classification without assertion. In: Tucker, M., Thompson, A., Northup, O., Bennett, R. (eds.), Proceedings of FAJL 5, MITWPL, pp. 141–154. MIT (2012)

    Google Scholar 

  • McCready, E.: A semantics for honorifics with reference to Thai. In: Aroonmanakun, W., Boonkwan, P., Supnithi, T., (eds.), Proceedings of PACLIC 28, pp. 513–521. Chulalongkorn University (2014)

    Google Scholar 

  • McCready, E.: Varieties of conventional implicature. Semant. Pragmat. 3, 1–57 (2010)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • McCready, E.: The Semantics and Pragmatics of Honorification: Register and Social Meaning. Oxford University Press (2019)

    Google Scholar 

  • McCready, E., Ottosson, E.: Pattern as narrative: the structure of botanical stories. ANEST International Workshop, National Chung-Hsing University, Taichung, Taiwan, Paper presented at Narrating Nature (2021)

    Google Scholar 

  • Montague, R.: The proper treatment of quantification in ordinary English. In: Thomason, R.H. (ed.) Formal Philosophy: Selected papers of Richard Montague, pp. 188–221. Yale University Press, New Haven, CO, 1974. Originally published in Approaches to Natural Language (1973)

    Google Scholar 

  • Morton, T.: All Art is Ecological. Penguin (2021)

    Google Scholar 

  • Oshima, D.Y.: Against the multidimensional approach to honorific meaning: a solution to the binding problem of conventional implicature. In: Okazaki, N., Yada, K., Satoh, K., Mineshima, K. (eds.) JSAI-isAI 2020. LNCS (LNAI), vol. 12758, pp. 113–128. Springer, Cham (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-79942-7_8

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Portner, P., Pak, M., Zanuttini, R.: The speaker-addressee relation at the syntax-semantics interface. Language 95(1), 1–36 (2019)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Potts, C.: The expressive dimension. Theoret. Linguist. 33, 165–198 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1515/TL.2007.011

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Roberts, C.: Modal subordination and pronominal anaphora in discourse. Linguist. Philos. 12(6), 683–721 (1989)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Wittgenstein, L.: On Certainty. Wiley-Blackwell (1991). Originally published 1969

    Google Scholar 

  • Yamada, A.: The syntax, semantics and pragmatics of Japanese addressee-honorific markers. Ph.D. thesis, Georgetown University (2019)

    Google Scholar 

  • Yamada, A., Donatelli, L.: A persona-based analysis of politeness in Japanese and Spanish. In: Proceedings of Logic and Engineering of Natural Language Semantics, vol. 17. JSAI (2020)

    Google Scholar 

  • Zimmermann, T.E.: Meaning postulates and the model-theoretic approach to natural language semantics. Linguist. Philos. 22, 529–561 (1999)

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Aoyama Gakuin University, Tokyo, Japan

    Elin McCready

Authors
  1. Elin McCready
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Elin McCready .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Kansai University, Suita, Japan

    Katsutoshi Yada

  2. Tokyo Metropolitan University, Tokyo, Japan

    Yasufumi Takama

  3. Keio University, Tokyo, Japan

    Koji Mineshima

  4. National Institute of Informatics, Tokyo, Japan

    Ken Satoh

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2023 Springer Nature Switzerland AG

About this paper

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this paper

McCready, E. (2023). Honorifics, Grounds and Ideologies. 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_13

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-36190-6_13

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-031-36189-0

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-031-36190-6

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation