The purpose of this study is to investigate personal pronouns in terms of hornorifics in modern Japanese. Personal pronoouns in other Indo-eruopean languages are rather simple compare to those of Korean and Japanese. Personal pronouns such as "watakus...
The purpose of this study is to investigate personal pronouns in terms of hornorifics in modern Japanese. Personal pronoouns in other Indo-eruopean languages are rather simple compare to those of Korean and Japanese. Personal pronouns such as "watakushi", "watashi", "boku", "ore" show a rather rich varieties in vocabulary as well as in its systems, and they don't make any inflections.
In this thesis the writer attempts to review particularly the relationship between personal pronouns and honorific structure of their meanings. Not only having demonstrative functions, but also they indicate speaker's judgement of honorific level towards his hearer. In this term Korean personal pronoun and that of Japanese are in common.
Some of the significant findings in this study were as follows:
(1) the first personal pronoun "watashi" is standard form in mordern Japanese. It can be used among male and female in common. However we find a strong tendency of using among female speakers generally. When a male speaker chooses "watashi" we may assume that the speaker talks or writes either to his elderly person or to his fellow. He usually does'nt choose it for indicating himself to his junior hearer. For instance, parents never call themselves as "watashi" in front of their children, they rather use the kinship terminologies such as "otoosang" or "okaasang" instead of "watashi". Again, an elderly person or a senior may call oneself as "sense" etc.
(2) The second personal pronoun "anata" seldom appears in Japanese sentences or in conversation. They prefer to abbreviate "anata". When they try to express honor to their speaker, they either abbreviate subject or they substitute for terminologies of social positions like "syachoo", "kachoo", "sensee". This is one of the characteristic difference between Japanese and Indo-europen languages. "Anata" may be said different from "you", and I may say this as "selectional restrictions of personal pronouns".
(3) The third personal pronoun "kare", and "kanojo" are not used for indicating elderly person. For the third person whom one, knows by name or by certain social position, the speaker prefers to call by name or by social position.
(4) Korean and Japanese show similarities in the sense that personal pronouns change in accordance with speech level.
(5) "watashi", "atashi" and "anata" are mainly used by female speakers. "boku", "washi", "ore", and "omae" are used by male speaker. So Korean learners of Japanese better be careful when they study, that the subject indicates female, then sentence ending has to be harmonized with it.
(6) When the system of "ko, so, a, do" is diverted to indicate personal pronoun, it means that speaker expresses his intention of honorifics to his hearer. This way of using demonstrative pronoun for indicating person, has been developed since early stage of middle Japanese.
When "kore" is used for person, it means that the subject of indication belongs to his inner circle such as one of his family member. By choosing demonstrative pronoun "ko, so, a, do", one may express his intention of modesty. But "are", "ano hito", "achira" may not be used for indicating elderly person. They usually indicate husband or fiance or his own children.
As is generally known, Korean and Japanese languages are quite similar in various syntactic structure. And here again, I would like to emphasize personal pronoun is a typical one.