Diachronic Changes in First-Person Pronouns in Literary Style Text during the Meiji and Taisho Periods: Analysis of the “Corpus of Historical Japanese, Meiji Era / Taishō Era Series I: Magazines” and the “Toyo Gakugei Zasshi”
アイテムタイプ
紀要論文 / Departmental Bulletin Paper
言語
日本語
キーワード
近代語, 文語文, 一人称代名詞, 単数・複数用法, 『日本語歴史コーパス』
キーワード(英)
modern Japanese, literary style text, first-person pronouns, singular and plural usage, “Corpus of Historical Japanese”
I studied and analyzed the “Corpus of Historical Japanese, Meiji Era / Taishō Era Series I: Magazines” as well as the “Toyo Gakugei Zasshi” (editions 1–15) to clarify the actual state of quantitative and qualitative diachronic changes in the use of first-person pronouns in literary style text from the non-literary genre during the Meiji and Taisho periods. The analysis elucidated the following observations: i) an increase and development in the singular usage of gojin (吾人) and a decrease in the usage of yo (余); ii) an increase and development in the plural usage of warera (我等) and the competition between warera, gojin and ware (我); and iii) the disappearance of the separate usage of word forms between singular and plural with the development of the singular usage of gojin.