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What Do "Personal Pronouns" Do in Japanese Discourse? 1. Introduction

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What Do Riikka Länsisalmi You and 1in Japanese: What do "personal pronouns" do in Japanese discourse? 1. Introduction It is common knowledge that in many cases overt mention of subjects is unnecessary in Japanese. This is the reason there is often no need for an oveft term referring, for example, to the first or second person in discourse. The referent is usually left out in what is referred to as unmarked situations, i.e., cases where it can be identified through a grammatical construction or inferred from honorifrc mode or deictic expressions (e.g., verbs of giving and receiving), or it represents the (paragraph) topic or can be understood through contextual cues. Studies ofellipsis in Japanese abound, but the natural extension ofsuch inquiries, namely, those aimed at answering the question "What functions do terms of reference generally have when they are present?" are fewer in number. This paper is intended to fill in some of the gaps left by earlier srudies dealing with (so-called) Japanese personal pronouns. Earlier studies have focused on the multitude of possible different pronominal and other forms and the factors determining their choice in a number of imaginary situations, but my purpose is to look at first and second person pronouns occurring in Japanese conversation from an interactional perspective: Vy'hat do personal pronouns do in conversation, what are their communicative functions? Although I have adopted the standard term "personal pronoun" in the present study, I intend to demonstrate that, in many cases, linguistic entities covered by this term in Japanese do not correspond to personal pronouns in languages such as English or Finnish, for example. Rather, Japanese pronouns could be considered to represent a point on a (non- language-specific) continuum extending from nouns to morphologically distinct pronominal forms. I carry out my examination by analyzing fìrst and second person pronoun use in conversational interaction depicted in five Japanese films and discuss the following points: (t) various pronominal forms and restrictions related to their use in conversation, (2) structural environments requiring the use of pronominal forms or other overt terms of reference, (3) 2"d person person pronouns as vocative terms, (4) 2nd person pronouns as affect keys or SKYJournal ofLinguistics 11 (2001). 121-150 122 RIIKKA LÄNSISALMI interactional adjustors, and (5) personal pronouns in linguistic strategies. The function of approach I apply is interactional in its oriéntation and focuses on the given linguistic items analyzed in specific contexts' 2. Japanese "personal pronouns" 2.1. Different pronominal forms comprise not Terms that are used to refer to the 1", 2nd and 3'd person in Japanese only (so-called) personal pronouns, but also various other categories, such as terms' and so forth' The ffãfessional) títies, kinshþ terms, proper-names' status syntactic question of ihether Japanese has anìndependent morphological or of personal ptonount has been a controversial topic in Japanese no "ut"goryti.,gíi*i"r, uåd ..r"u."h"rs appeaf to be divided on the issue. Some make distinction between nouns and'so-called personal pronouns (and otherpronouns) while others f"g., Cu*i"t , 1994;Kiyose, 1995; Suzuki, 1973; Teramuta,1982)' 1982) (or pre'fer to employ nonstandard terms, such as "person terms" (Bachnik, meß-hi" ,personal nouns') (Takubo, 1997), instead of."personal ",ninshoo still pronouns" or talk abåut a noun-pronoun continuum (Sugamoto,.1989), and no reference ãifrers simpty speak ofa class ofJapanese personal pronouns with latter generally ; ;;y t"rriüle unsettled questions concerning this ropic. The pronouns' from Jupunese to have an extremely high number ofpersonal one, taking into "onriäå.'"t i"n u speaker of the language must seleõt the most appropriate and other considerátion the relations existing between the speaker and addressee etc' persons present, the formality ofthe situation, sex and age ofthe interactants, ' in the first Figure 1tj is displays the most common pronominal forms person.t afasåi should be I According to Onishi (1994: 362)' in the case of male sPeakers the term the term atakushi for female speakers treated as a "variant ofa social dialect". He includes also in her list of"representative in the same category. Ide (1982: 358) includes thefemale atakusl¡i degree of honorification' forms of person referents" and marks it as a variant of relatively high Shibatani 11990: 371) does not mention the term. Io¿,,eNo 1rN J¡p¡Nese 123 Figure l. Gender distinction in Japanese first person pronominal forms (adapted fiom lde 1982: 358-359. Shibatani 1990:371, and Onishi 1994:362) Formal Informal Male speaker watakushi watash¡ boku (atashi) ore Female speaker watakushi atakushí watashi a¡ashi l4tatakushi is extremely formal for men, but slightly less so for female speakers. Although prescriptively the standard form, watashi often sounds relatively formal in men's speech. It could, however, be described as the average pronominal form for women. The female pronoun atakushi, on the other hand, is sometimes referred to as "snobbish" (Harada 1976 5ll) and is used more infrequently than the other forms. Boku is the term generally employed by men, although, from a prescriptive point of view, the term is not recommended when addressing a social superior. The usual colloquial forms, used for example with close friends and family members, are atashi for women and ore for men. Figure (2) displays the most common pronominal forms used in the second person.2 Figure 2. Gender distinction in Japanese second person pronominal forms (adapted from Ide 1982:358-359, Shibatani 1990:371, and Onishi 1994:362) Formal Informal Male speaker anata kimi antct omae Female speaker anata anlú Anata is considered to be standard and polite and is usually the first second person pronoun taught to non-native language learners. It cannot, however, be used when addressing a social superior. In addition to anata, male speakers can have recourse to various other second person forms: kimi and anta are generally used to refer to addressees of lower (or sometimes equal) social status and omae 2 Onishi (1994:362)treatsfhetermantaas a "variant of a social dialect" in both men's speech and women's speech. Ide (1982:359) lists the same term solely for female speakers. t24 RIIKKA LÄNSISALMI is informal and colloquial, sometimes even pejorative' By contrast' female repertoire: speakers generally have only one informal and colloquial form in their anta. Thetermslistedinfigures(1)and(2)ateallsingularforms'andplural -gata, -ra, forms can be obtained by adãing one of the following suff,rxes: -tachi, -io*o.t ln realify, the tãtal nutnb"r of forms which are generally considered to other be first o. ,""ond person pronouns is much larger' Lists compiled by researchers may thårefor" àiff"r from those presented here and non-standard the variants of Japanese may display other terms or different uses of aforementioned terms.a free It is important to note that the terms displayed in these f,rgures are not a person variants. As a rule, second person pronouns cannot be used to address substituted of higher status, and prop"i nouns, kinship terms or titles must be limited insteãd. The use of pró.,ominal forms in Japanese is actually relatively on the- in that they constitute a part ofthe honorific system and thus depends - pronoun bears level ofspeech. Selection ofa specifrc overt first or second person in the same context' Thus' a direct link to what kind of verb forms are appropriate with for the casual first person male prònoun ore cannot be employed came humble"*ample or polite verb forms as in ore wa Kyooto kara maìrimashitø'L is generally (humble anà polite) from Kyoto'. Liguistic politeness in Japanese honorific' àescribed in terms of two dimensions: cutuui- polite and humble - between speech ih" curual - polite axis sets the so-called psychological distance determines the choice funi"ipun* å any particular face-to-face interaction and indicate a of verb forms: short -da/ru (copula/verb ending) forms .casual polite int"rf"rronut .elationship and an iniormal situation, while so-called neutral more -derrr/*osu (copula/verb ending) forms are used to show politeness-in So-called foãal relatiàns'hips and also betleen close friends in formal situations' to o¡eself in humble forms are employed to "lower" oneself or persons related deference front ofa higher status adâressee and respectful forms a¡e used to show for the verb 'to go' to the addre-ssee (or a third person). Possible combinations includeforexample iku(casialaníinformal, 1",2ndor3'dpe^rs.),ikimasu.(neufial ;i 3" pìrs), irassharrz (casual and respecttul,2nd or 3'o pers')' ;;li;;-i";2; (polite and ïasshaimasu(polite ând råspectful, 2nà or 3'd pers.) and mairimasu from the context' an fr"rn¡1", 1" 1oi3'd; pers.). If the agent cannot be inferred 3 179) and Takubo (1 997: I 8) for See example (4) and Harada (1 976: 5 1 l), Hinds (1978: 140' a detailed discussion. a See section 2.3. for more examples. Yot,,AND 1rN JAPANESÊ 125 overt term ofreference must be added. 2.2. Etymology of pronominal forms Some of the researchers who do not separate the aforementioned terms from nouns approach the issue of categoÅzafion from a diachronic perspective. Ifone examines such personal pronouns as the English you or the Finnish sinci and te. one finds that they usually cannot be traced back to words with more lexical meanings by the average speaker. Their most prominent feature is their deictic component (Braun, 1988:257). Given the fact that, etymologically, the majority ofso-called Japanese personal pronouns are derived from regular nouns, that is, they once had-and some ofthem still have-specific meanings such as 'servant' (boku),'emperor, ruler' (kimi), and so on, it can be said that Japanese has no genuine personal pronouns and, therefore, no grammatical category ofperson in the same sense as English does, for example.
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