Japanese pronouns

Japanese pronouns (or Japanese deictic classifiers) are words in the Japanese language used to address or refer to present people or things, where present means people or things that can be pointed at. The position of things (far away, nearby) and their role in the current interaction (goods, addresser, addressee, bystander) are features of the meaning of those words. In contrast to present people and things, absent people and things can be referred to only by naming as in "Miyazaki", by instantiating a class as in "the house" (in a context where there is only one house) and by presenting things in relation to present, named and suigeneris people or things as in "I'm going home", "I'm going to Miyazaki's place", "I'm going to the mayor's place", "I'm going to my mother's place", "I'm going to my mother's friend's place". Functionally, deictic classifiers not only indicate that the referenced person or thing has a spatial position or an interactional role but also classify it to some extent. In addition, Japanese pronouns are restricted by a situation type (register): who is talking to whom, about what, and through which medium (spoken or written, staged or in private). In that sense, when a male is talking to his male friends, the pronoun set that is available to him is different from that which is available when a man of the same age talks to his wife and from that which is available when a woman talks to her husband. These variations in pronoun availability is determined by the register.

In linguistics, generativists and other structuralists suggest that the Japanese language does not have pronouns as such, since, unlike pronouns in most other languages that have them, these words are syntactically and morphologically identical to nouns.^[1][2] As functionalists point out, however, these words function as personal references, demonstratives, and reflexives, just as pronouns do in other languages.^[3][4]

Japanese has a large number of pronouns, differing in use by formality, gender, age, and relative social status of speaker and audience. Further, pronouns are an open class, with existing nouns being used as new pronouns with some frequency. This is ongoing; a recent example is jibun (自分, self), which is now used by some young men as a casual first-person pronoun.

Pronouns are used less frequently in the Japanese language than in many other languages,^[5] mainly because there is no grammatical requirement to include the subject in a sentence. That means that pronouns can seldom be translated from English to Japanese on a one-to-one basis.

The common English personal pronouns, such as "I", "you", and "they", have no other meanings. However, most Japanese personal pronouns do. Consider for example two words corresponding to the English pronoun "I": 私 (watashi) also means "private" or "personal". 僕 (boku) is a masculine form of 私 (watashi). It is mostly used by males, especially those in their youth,^[6] but tomboys are known to use the word as well.

Japanese words that refer to other people are part of the encompassing system of honorific speech and should be understood within that context. Pronoun choice depends on the speaker's social status (as compared to the listener's) as well as the sentence's subjects and objects.

The first-person pronouns (e.g., watashi, 私) and second-person pronouns (e.g., anata, 貴方) are used in formal contexts (However the latter can be considered rude). In many sentences, pronouns that mean "I" and "you" are omitted in Japanese when the meaning is still clear.^[3]

When it is required to state the topic of the sentence for clarity, the particle wa (は) is used, but it is not required when the topic can be inferred from context. Also, there are frequently used verbs that can indicate the subject of the sentence in certain contexts: kureru (くれる) means "give" in the sense that "somebody gives something to me or to somebody very close to me." Ageru (あげる) also means "give", but in the sense that "someone gives something to someone other than me."

In sentences comprising a single adjective (often those ending in -shii), it is often assumed that the speaker is the subject. For example, the adjective sabishii (寂しい) can represent a complete sentence that means "I am lonely."

Thus, the first-person pronoun is usually not used unless the speaker wants to put a special stress on the fact that they are referring to themselves or if it is necessary to make it clear. In some contexts, it may be considered uncouth to refer to the listener (second person) by a pronoun. If it is required to state the second person, the listener's surname, suffixed with -san or some other title (like "customer", "teacher", or "boss"), is generally used.

Gender differences in spoken Japanese also create another challenge, as men and women refer to themselves with different pronouns. Social standing also determines how people refer to themselves, as well as how they refer to other people.

List of Japanese personal pronouns

The list is incomplete, as there are numerous Japanese pronoun forms, which vary by region and dialect. This is a list of the most commonly used forms. "It" has no direct equivalent in Japanese^[3] (though in some contexts the demonstrative pronoun それ is translatable as "it"). Also, Japanese doesn't generally inflect by case, so, I is equivalent to me.

Archaic personal pronouns

Suffixes

Suffixes are added to pronouns to make them plural.

Demonstrative and interrogative pronouns

Demonstrative words, whether functioning as pronouns, adjectives or adverbs, fall into four groups. Words beginning with ko- indicate something close to the speaker (so-called proximal demonstratives). Those beginning with so- indicate separation from the speaker or closeness to the listener (medial), while those beginning with a- indicate greater distance (distal). Interrogative words, used in questions, begin with do-.^[3]

Demonstratives are normally written in hiragana.

Reflexive

Japanese has only one word corresponding to reflexive pronouns such as myself, yourself, or themselves in English. The word 自分 (jibun) means "one's self" and may be used for human beings or some animals. It is not used for cold-blooded animals or inanimate objects.^[3]

See also

• Gender differences in spoken Japanese
• Gender-neutral pronoun: Japanese
• Japanese honorifics
• T–V distinction, pronoun distinctions more generally

References

External links

Look up Category:Japanese pronouns in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

• Japan Reference: Personal pronouns in Japanese
• sci.lang.japan FAQ: Japanese pronouns