How Society Shapes Language

Personal Pronouns in the Greater Burma Zone

Datos Bibliográficos

ID19233644
AutoresAndré Müller (0000-0001-5770-6723, University of Zurich, autor de correspondencia), Rachel Weymuth (0000-0003-2984-9641, University of Zurich)
Año2017
Volumen71
Número1
Páginas409-432
Fecha de publicación2017-03-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessNo
TipoARTICLE
RevistaAsiatische Studien – Études Asiatiques (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0004-4717 • E-ISSN: 2235-5871
EditorialDe Gruyter (PUBLISHER • DE)
DOI10.1515/asia-2016-0021
OpenAlexW2601485631
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas3
Referencias citadas33

In the “Greater Burma Zone”, an area that includes Myanmar and adjacent regions of the neighboring countries, there are two different systems of personal pronouns that occur predominantly: a grammatical one and one that we call “hierarchical system”. The aim of this paper is to explain the two systems and their development. A sample of 42 languages shows that smaller language communities have grammatical systems and the most dominant languages today have hierarchical ones. Besides these two groups, there are also some languages with a “mixed system”, which means the grammatical system is retained and only a few honorific terms are added as pronouns. An important question will therefore be why the systems are distributed just in this way. Several factors seem to play a role, among them sociocultural structures, historical developments and language contact

Honorific · Language contact · Linguistics · Personal pronoun · Sociocultural evolution · Sociology · Anthropology · Computer Science · History · Language, Discourse, Communication Strategies · Multilingual Education and Policy · Philosophy · Psychology · Swearing, Euphemism, Multilingualism