Addressee Honorific
Definition:
An addressee honorific is an honorific in a system in which a level of status of the addressee relative to the speaker is expressed through a choice made among linguistic alternants, irrespective of whether the alternants refer to the addressee.
Examples:
(Javanese)
In Javanese, the following alternants all mean ‘house’:
- omah
- grija
- dalem
Each form in the list successively expresses a higher status of the person spoken to.
Source:
This page is an extract from the LinguaLinks Library. Version 5.0 published on CD-ROM by SIL International, 2003.