Programme: accepted abstracts

Abstract ID: 911

Part of General Poster Session (Other abstracts in this session)

Use of foreign-origin personal pronouns: Observations in overseas varieties of Japanese

Authors: Hiramoto, Mie (1); Asahi, Yoshiyuki (2)
Submitted by: Hiramoto, Mie (National University of Singapore, Singapore)

Japanese is known for its range of personal pronouns selected in order to suit pragmatic contexts like the relationship between interlocutors. Suzuki (2001:162) discusses the use of Japanese pronouns in self-referent situations: a person alternating between the first person pronouns boku (less formal masculine register) and watakushi (formal neutral register) both of which are approximately equivalent to the English first person pronouns ‘I-my-me’. Similarly, the second person pronouns omae (vulgar register) and anata (formal neutral register) equates to ‘you-your-you’ in English.

In Japanese, personal pronouns are often replaced with titles or proper names, or dropped entirely when their reference is understood from the context. Furthermore, compared to other languages, such as many of the Indo-European languages, Japanese pronouns are agglutinative and do not behave as portmanteau morphemes when it comes to grammatical markings. That is, Japanese pronouns are not marked paradigmatically according to case or number as in English, for example. Instead, such grammatical information is marked by explicit number and case markers in an agglutinative manner.

Based on many examples from languages with morphological paradigms, Thomason and Kaufman (1988) espoused the commonly held belief that personal pronouns are generally immune to borrowing in the absence of extreme cultural pressure. However, Thomason later (2001) makes distinctions between language types and further explains that there are languages that tolerate pronoun borrowings and those that do not. In this view, Japanese falls into the former group.

There are a number of examples of pronoun borrowings in Japanese spoken outside of Japan. The following demonstrates a few examples from Japanese spoken in Hawai‘i.

(1) From a second generation son to his father (data collected in 1977 by a local Japanese American university student in Hawai‘i, cited in Kurokawa 1978:74)

Papa, yû no bâtsudê tsudê, sake kôte kita yo.

Papa 2PP-GEN birthday today sake go-buy-Past SFP

‘Papa, today’s your birthday; I brought back sake for you.’

(2) From a second generation daughter to her mother (data collected in 1977 by a local Japanese American university student in Hawai‘i, cited in Kurokawa 1978:74)

Okâ-san, last night mî wa 2-ji made benkyôshitetta.

mother last night 1PP-NOM 2 o’clock until study-PAST

‘Mother, last night, I studied until 2 o’clock.’

Concerning Japanese spoken in Hawai‘i, some scholars have attempted to explain the use of English pronouns, e.g., mî (from ‘me’) or yû (from ‘you’), as a form of solidarity building among Japanese living in Hawai‘i’s plantation communities (Higa 1975, Kurokawa 1976). Nonetheless, the pronoun borrowings are not an idiosyncratic phenomenon observed merely in Japanese spoken in Hawai‘i. There are reports from other regions, including the North American continent, Brazil, Taiwan, Sakhalin, Palau, and the Bonin Islands.

By investigating both previously available and recently collected data from Japanese spoken outside Japan, this study aims to explain the use of the borrowed personal pronouns (e.g., English mî and yû) from a Japanese pragmatics points of view. We hypothesize the intricacy of the Japanese honorific system regarding pronoun usages plays a role in motivation of pronoun borrowing among Japanese spoken overseas.

Sociolinguistics Symposium 19

Programme: accepted abstracts

Use of foreign-origin personal pronouns: Observations in overseas varieties of Japanese