ニューギニア系言語の話者は敬語を使うのか？ : アメレ語の場合

要旨

The island of New Guinea and its surrounding areas (Papua New Guinea, West Papua, and other Melanesia areas) are the most linguistically diverse region in the world. As many as 1,000 languages are spoken in the region, and about half (about 500) are classified as New Guinea genera (Trans-New Guinea language family). In this study, we examined Amele, one of the New Guinea languages spoken in Papua New Guinea, to determine whether Amele has honorific forms and honorific usage. Our findings suggest that while Amele does not have a grammatical honorific system, it does show respect through lexical and other means, as well as through the use of loanwords from Tok Pisin, the official language of Papua New Guinea. In addition, sociolinguistic considerations are presented about the limited honorifics and usage of the Amele language. Previous research on honorifics has shown that they can be classified as showing respect by using different forms of the second-person personal pronouns observed in European languages. As an illustration, the French language employs the use of “tu/vous”, whereby close acquaintances are addressed with the 2nd person singular “tu”. In contrast, superiors and first-time acquaintances are addressed with the 2nd person plural “vous”. While non-Indo-European, Uralic Finnish has a 2nd person pronoun called “sinä/te”. The second is the grammatical form of respect, which is observed in Asian languages such as Japanese, Korean, and Thai. In Japanese, there are honorific, humble, and polite forms, and the honorific forms are quite distinct, as in the case of the verb "miru (to see)," where the honorific is "mi-rare-ru/ go-ran-ninaru." This type of honorific form is not observed in European languages. In this study, we conducted a field study in the Amele region of Papua New Guinea in the summer of 2023, and we would like to share the following points about the use of honorific forms in Amele. First, the Amele 2nd person singular personal pronoun is “ina” and the 2nd person plural personal pronoun is “ege,” but it was found that there is no distinction between “ina/ege” in terms of respect, as in the French “tu/vous.” Next, examples of imperative sentences in Amele are shown in (1) below. (1) Amele language: a. Ho-ga. "Come (toward you: 2 sg)" b. Ho-iga. "Come (toward you: 2 pl). According to Amele speakers, in the imperative (1), there is a difference between ordering one person (1a) and ordering several people (1b). However, there is no deference as in the Japanese "kite (come!)." Based on the above observations, it is clear that Amele does not have a policy of using different personal pronouns, such as “tu/vous,” as in French, nor does it have a usage similar to the honorific form in Japanese. When we asked Amele speakers whether Amele does not show respect to superiors and dignitaries, we found that they use titles such as "president" or "teacher" in Tok Pisin (or English), instead of Amele, to show respect by psychologically distancing the speaker and the listener. Based on previous anthropological studies, the present study found that Papua New Guinean society is relatively egalitarian and thus has not developed a formal language grammar and that the inner community who are close (e.g.,acquaintances, people from the same village, speakers of the same Amele language) speak Amele, in contrast, the outer community (i.e., those who are less close or speak a different language) speak Tok Pisin. They claim that they coordinate respect and familiarity by speaking Tok Pisin to the outer community (i.e., those who are not close, those who speak a different language, government officials, and foreigners).