Re: THEORY: questions

Christophe Grandsire wrote:
> I'd agree, if you gave me an example of one of those Japanese words used
> normally pronoun-like in a sentence where it's not used pronoun-like (that's to
> say, where it doesn't refer to a participant of the conversation).
"Watakushi" can be used to mean "private" as in _watakushigoto_ "private
matter".  Of course, this is still a relatively new pronoun, but still
goes to show that the distinction can be less than rigid.  Also, my
kanji dictionary lists "manservant" under "boku" (even under the reading
"boku"), but my Japanese-English dictionary only says "I (used by
males)".  Also, regular nouns and names can be used in the place of
pronouns.  This is why I consider the pronouns to be a specialized class
of nouns in Japanese.  I do agree that it's excessive to say that
Japanese has no pronouns, unless you define pronouns as having to act
exactly like in Western languages, which I'd say is too narrow.

Also, "kare" and "kanojo" ("he" and "she") CAN, and often are, used to
mean "Boyfriend" and "girlfriend".  A person I know mentioned that she
used to be confused when Japanese people would ask her online "kare
wa?", until she learned about that usage.  :-)  I'm not sure if any of
the other first or second person pronouns can still be used in
non-pronominal uses.

> Also,
> pronouns don't behave like nouns when it comes to pluralization. "hana" can
> mean flower or flowers, but AFAIK "anata" can never be used for "you (plural)".
> For a plural "you", you're obliged to use "anatatachi".
Or anatagata.  True.  However, this is merely a hierarchical feature.
From what I understand, the plural suffixes are never used with
inanimates, are optional with humans (I'm not sure about non-human
animates), and obligatory with pronouns.  The use of those suffixes is
not the same with all type of nouns, so it's not surprising that one
specialized class of nouns, i.e., pronouns, should make it obligatory.

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