The Syntax of Subject Honorifics in Japanese

It is a standard analysis that the subject honorific form o-V ni naru (SH) is a subject honorific agreement morpheme in Japanese. In this presentation, we claim that SH is not a true subject honorific agreement morpheme in Japanese, rather the honorific passive form (V-rare, HP) is. We first provide new data showing that there are clear syntactic differences between SH and HP. We then argue that the differences can be attributed to the structural positions where they are realized. Under the proposed analysis, SH appears inside of VP, where HP is realized on T, which is a true honorific agreement morpheme in Japanese. Thus, our analysis constitutes additional evidence for the assumption that honorification is an instance of agreement.