Tiered honorification in Eastern Indo-Aryan: [HON]-less, and also presuppositionless [slides]

Ruoan Wang (MIT)

Longstanding tradition in the literature uses [HON] to analyze tiered honorification systems of Indo-Aryan. This work explores an analysis outside that tradition, using Wang’s (2023) presuppositional account which does not make use of [HON]. I make a crucial modification to Wang (2023) and show how it can explain the diachronic and synchronic patterns of Indo-Aryan honorification.