How revolution and gender dynamics affected Nepali 3rd-person honorification from the 1990s to the 2010s: A corpus analysis

Abstract

One way to express honorification, by which speakers index relations of respect, is through varying pronouns and verb inflection. This phenomenon has been studied in European languages with binary 2nd-person pronouns (the T-V model). Past research finds that these systems tend to level with social change. This study explores Nepali, which also uses pronouns and verb-inflections. Nepali has 2nd and 3rd-person honorification, with 4 and 3 different levels respectively. The study employs a corpus analysis to investigate Nepali 3rd-person honorification with regards to the fall of monarchy (1996–2010). The paper finds that this social change correlates to 3rd-person honor leveling.