Politeness Distinctions in Second Person Pronouns (Feature 18)

From Apics

Feature Annotation

This feature is concerned with politeness distinctions in second person pronouns, i.e. addressee pronouns. The great majority of languages have pronouns for reference to the addressee, i.e. forms that are unlike nouns in a number of ways (e.g. in that they cannot be modified by demonstratives, and in that they cannot be anaphorically taken up by third-person pronouns).
The main subdivision is between languages lacking and languages having a politeness distinction. Many languages are like English in that they have only one second-person pronoun, regardless of the social relations between the speaker and the addressee (cf. English you). Other languages are like French in that they have two different pronouns whose use is determined by politeness-related pragmatic factors (cf. French toi/vous).
Languages with a politeness distinction may have a binary distinction (e.g. French, value 2) or a three-(or more) way distinction (i.e. a multiple distinction, e.g. Hindi, Marathi, value 3).
(Note that sometimes the polite addressee pronouns behave like third-person forms in the language (e.g. Italian Lei, German Sie), but for the purposes of this feature, they are regarded as second-person pronouns.)
Reference to the addressee can also be achieved with nouns, in particular titles and kinship terms, in many languages (“What does grandma wish?” for ‘What do you (grandma) wish?’). Since titles often develop into polite pronouns (e.g. Guinea Bissau Creole nhu/nha ‘you(polite)’, from senhor/senhora), it is sometimes not easy to tell whether a word is still a noun or has developed into a pronoun. For this feature, a word that can be used in reference to the addressee but that can also be used for ordinary third-person reference is not regarded as a pronoun (e.g. Principense Sun ‘Lord, Mr’).
In some languages, pronouns are hardly used at all for reference to the addressee, which is relevant to this feature because the avoidance of pronouns seems to be due to politeness: Instead, kinship terms, status terms, titles and names are used for second-person reference. This occurs in some southeast Asian languages (Thai, Vietnamese, value 4).

Additional remarks

....

Values

Value		Value Annotation
1	No politeness distinction	English you is used to address intimates and non-intimates
2	Binary politeness distinction	Middle English thou (2sg.intimate), ye (2sg.polite); Cape Verdean abo (2sg.intimate), anho (2sg.polite)
3	Multiple politeness distinction	Marathi tū(family members and intimate persons), te/he(2sg.honorific for people with higher social status), āpan (2sg.high-honorific for priests and teachers and in very formal contexts)
4	No use of second-person pronouns for reasons of politeness	Pronouns are avoided for second person reference, and status and kinship terms, titles, and other complex nominal expressions are used instead (e.g. Thai, Vietnamese).

WALS No.

45 (Total)