The Kazak honorific system has been described to consist of a number of second person forms and terms of address. In addition to these core honorific expressions, however, my recent study of spoken Kazak in the Chinese Altai reveals that there are many other politeness features — both linguistic and non-linguistic — that constitute a loosely integrated honorific register system. They include grammatical distinctions (e.g., singular/plural, past/perfect, confirmative/non-confirmative), lexical distinctions (e.g., Chinese titles/Kazak kin terms), prosody (e.g., loud/quiet, fast/slow), as well as non-linguistic features (e.g., smoking/ non-smoking, male facial hair grown/removed, serving of black tea/milk tea). This paper describes these “non-core” expressions and the semiotic processes in which they, together with the core expressions, form a dichotomous system of contrast between plain and honorific registers.

Based on a research proposal from Cambridge University that knowing the anatomical structure of the insects wouldhelp make an excellent biomimetic robot, we studied the anatomical characteristics of insects for application to jumpingrobots. We choose crickets, grasshoppers, and mole crickets among the Orthoptera. The external and muscle microstructuresof the three insects were compared using a stereomicroscope, an optical microscope and an electron microscope. Musclefiber bundles of the third legs of the grasshoppers and crickets were very dense, although their mitochondria numberswere smaller than their first leg. Muscle fibers of the first legs of the mole crickets are more loosely arranged than grasshoppersand crickets’ first legs, and there is a large number of different sized mitochondria, although the distinction between musclebundles is not clear.