Tiered honorification in Eastern Indo-Aryan: A [HON]-less proposal

Abstract

Longstanding tradition in the literature uses a [HON] feature to analyze tiered honorification systems of Indo-Aryan. This work presents a stark opposition to that tradition, using Wang’s (2023) framework based on a pragmatic calculus, which crucially does not make use of  [HON].  I adapt such a framework to show how it can explain both the diachronic and synchronic properties  of tiered systems.