Table Of ContentCurrent Issues in Linguistic Theory 344
Diachrony of Personal
Pronouns in Japanese
Osamu Ishiyama
J O HN B E N J A M I N S P U B L I S H I N G C O M PA N Y
DIACHRONY OF PERSONAL PRONOUNS IN JAPANESE
CURRENT ISSUES IN LINGUISTIC THEORY
AMSTERDAM STUDIES IN THE THEORY AND HISTORY
OF LINGUISTIC SCIENCE – Series IV
issn 0304-0763
General Editor
JOSEPH C. SALMONS
University of Wisconsin–Madison
DIACHRONY OF PERSONAL
PRONOUNS IN JAPANESE
A FUNCTIONAL AND
CROSS-LINGUISTIC PERSPECTIVE
OSAMU ISHIYAMA
Soka University of America
JOHN BENJAMINS PUBLISHING COMPANY
AMSTERDAM & PHILADELPHIA
TM Te paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of
the American National Standard for Information Sciences – Permanence
of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ansi z39.48-1984.
doi 10.1075/cilt.344
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8
Table of contents
Preface and acknowledgements vii
List of abbreviations ix
Chapter 1
Introduction 1
1.1 Preliminary remarks 1
1.2 Towards a defnition of personal pronouns (in Japanese) 2
1.3 Synchronic overview 5
1.4 Diachronic overview 8
1.5 Periodization and data 10
1.6 Outline 13
Chapter 2
Noun-based forms 15
2.1 Introduction 15
2.2 First person forms 21
2.2.1 Watakushi ‘private’ 21
2.2.2 Boku ‘servant’ 25
2.3 Second person forms 28
2.3.1 Kimi ‘lord’ 28
2.3.2 Kisama ‘nobility’ 32
2.4 Semantic bleaching and pragmatic depreciation 37
2.5 Summary and conclusion 44
Chapter 3
Demonstrative-based forms 47
3.1 Demonstratives in Japanese 47
3.1.1 Demonstratives and Japanese personal pronouns 47
3.1.2 Overview of Japanese demonstratives 49
3.2 Tird person forms 53
3.3 First/second person forms 58
3.3.1 Metonymic use of demonstratives for person referents 59
3.3.2 Inapplicability of speaker innovation 65
vi Diachrony of Personal Pronouns in Japanese
3.3.3 Functional dissimilarity between demonstratives
and frst/second person pronouns 67
3.3.4 From a demonstrative to a second person pronoun 68
3.4 Location nouns 72
3.4.1 Omae ‘honorable front’ 72
3.4.2 Temae ‘in front of hand’ 76
3.5 Summary and conclusion 79
Chapter 4
Principles of person shif 83
4.1 Introduction 83
4.2 Extravagant politeness 88
4.3 Spatial perspectives 91
4.4 Empathetic perspectives and self-objectifcation 93
4.4.1 Pragmatic depreciation and person shif 98
4.4.2 Self-objectifcation and pragmatic depreciation of temae
‘in front of hand’ 102
4.5 Summary and conclusion 105
Chapter 5
Diachrony of personal pronouns in functional
and cross-linguistic perspectives 109
5.1 Nominal sources 110
5.2 Displacement of semantic features 115
5.3 Demonstratives 124
5.4 Refexives 129
5.5 Grammaticalization and the emergence of personal pronouns 136
5.5.1 Controversies surrounding grammaticalization
and related phenomena 136
5.5.2 What grammaticalization and the development
of personal pronouns suggest about each other 139
5.6 Summary and conclusion 145
Chapter 6
Conclusion 149
6.1 Summary of the major fndings 149
6.2 Directions for future research 153
Apendix 157
References 161
Index 171
Preface and acknowledgements
Tis book is a functional and cross-linguistic investigation of the diachrony of
personal pronouns in Japanese. Factors such as the large inventory size, morpho-
syntactic similarities to nouns, sociolinguistic implicatures that they carry, and
multi-syllabicity characterize the pronominal inventory of Japanese. In other words,
personal pronouns in Japanese form a heterogeneous category with fuzzy bound-
aries with nouns and closely associated classes of expressions, including social ep-
ithets, demonstratives, and refexives. Although Japanese employed a variety of
items for person reference throughout its history, the focus of this study is the
development of personal pronouns used in Modern Japanese. Te Benvenistean
view of personal pronouns draws a clear boundary between the frst/second person
on the one hand and third person on the other, since the latter is a non-person.
Diachronically, the close relationship between third person and demonstrative pro-
nouns are well known in previous studies. Based on the examinations of historical
texts, this book will shed light on the nature of the tenuous diachronic link be-
tween frst/second person pronouns and demonstratives in Japanese. Furthermore,
I argue that nouns are the major source of personal pronouns, but that items of
non-nominal origins are generally unlikely to give rise to personal pronouns be-
cause their use for person referents can be resolved within (the extension of) their
original functions.
Functionally, personal pronouns are grammatical items, but the processes in
which they arise historically are far from straightforward. Grammaticalization is
largely consistent only with the change from nouns to personal pronouns. Te
ways in which personal pronouns arise from forms of non-nominal origins,
on the other hand, are diverse and each process must be dealt with separately.
Cross-linguistically, demonstratives and refexives are ofen used for person refer-
ents based on spatial and empathetic perspectives, e.g. the use of speaker-proximal
demonstratives and refexives for the speaker. Speaker-proximal forms may also
be used for the addressee if the speaker considers the addressee to be in his/her
proximal area. Similarly, refexives are ofen used for the addressee, especially in in-
terrogatives and imperatives for epistemological reasons. Crucially, however, these
usages can be predicted on the basis of the demonstrative and refexive functions.
Terefore, this book casts some doubt on the cross-linguistic generalization that
demonstratives and refexives constitute the major source of personal pronouns.
viii Diachrony of Personal Pronouns in Japanese
Besides nouns, the use of already established personal pronouns for a referent for
which they are not originally intended by displacing semantic features such as
number and person may contribute to the emergence of new pronoun function.
In all of these, politeness emerges as a primary motivation. Tis book explores how
politeness explains the cross-linguistically common source nouns as well as how it
afects the formation of new pronoun usage.
Because of the long textual tradition and diversity of source items, Japanese
ofers a valuable opportunity to examine the development of personal pronouns
under a cross-linguistic light. Te Japanese Text Initiative housed in the University
of Virginia Library deserves special acknowledgement for digitizing classical and
modern Japanese literature and making them available online. Parts of Chapter 3
are based on my article, “Te diachronic relationship between demonstratives and
frst/second person pronouns,” that appeared in Journal of Historical Pragmatics
(2012). I thank the publisher for permission to include revised material from this
publication in the present monograph.
Tough evolved signifcantly, many of the ideas explored in this book origi-
nated in my doctoral dissertation, Diachronic perspectives on personal pronouns in
Japanese, written at the State University of New York at Bufalo. I would like to thank
my dissertation committee members, David Fertig, David Zubin, and Mitsuaki
Shimojo whose guidance and intellectual stimulation were indispensable when
this project frst started. Over the years, I have beneftted from comments received
from fellow linguists at various conferences, though it would be impossible to list
them. I am grateful to two anonymous reviewers and members of the editorial
board whose insightful and constructive feedback helped make this a better book
than it would have been otherwise. I am especially thankful to the general editor
of this book series, Joe Salmons, for his guidance and encouragement throughout
the lengthy process of revising this work. My thanks also go to Anke de Looper of
John Benjamins who helped me navigate the fnal production stages of this book.
Finally, I would like to express my gratitude to my parents, Shigeru Ishiyama
[石山茂] and Noriko Ishiyama [石山宣子], and my parents-in-law, Ming-Fong
Lin [林民峰] and Chiung-Ying Lee [李琼瑛], who are always on my side. I am
profoundly and eternally indebted to them. Tis book is dedicated to them.
Irvine, California, June 2018
Osamu Ishiyama
List of abbreviations
1st frst person imp imperative
2nd second person inj interjection
3rd third person loc locative
acc accusative mod modality
ad-prox addressee-proximal neg negative
adv adverbializer nmlz nominalizer
asp aspect nom nominative
comp complementizer perf perfect
cond conditional pl plural
conn connective pol polite
conj conjunction pot potential
cop copula pst past
dat dative quot quotative
dec declarative req request
end ending resp respectful
emph emphatic s/ad-dist speaker and addressee distal
evid evidential s-dist speaker distal
excl exclamative slp speech level particle
fp fnal particle s-prox speaker proximal
gen genitive top topic
hon honorifcs q question
hp honorifc prefx voc vocative
hubl humble
