Honorific personal pronouns in the Tangut language

Abstract

There is an integral system of personal pronouns in the Tangut language. It is already known that there are pairs of general and honorific pronouns in the first- and second-person singular. Besides narrating the meaning of the honorifics in detail, it is pointed out in the present paper that a parallel distinction exists in the first-person plural as well, and if more than two pronouns of the same person appear successively in one phrase, only the preceding one may be expressed by an honorific form. There is no honorific form for the pronoun of the second-person plural.