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It hit me when I was editing this question which had the tag. I wasn't sure if 「娘」 is considered a pronoun in Japanese. Looking for relevant examples of kinship terminology in English, I think all the comparable terms I can think of are not categorized as pronouns. Wikipedia's pronoun page has this claim:

In English, kin terms like "mother," "uncle," "cousin" are a distinct word class from pronouns

This appears corroborated by dictionaries.

Wikipedia's Japanese pronouns page doesn't list such terms. There's no 母さん, 父上, 爺ちゃん, お姉ちゃん, or 兄貴. Another reference: 代名詞. So are they not pronouns? Why?

Eddie Kal
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  • I think Mother, Father, Grandpa, Sister, Brother... etc etc, isn't pronouns in English as well. At least I couldn't find them here. – Skye-AT Oct 19 '21 at 01:29
  • @Skye-AT Yes, I know, and dictionaries agree. Still I'd like to ask from a Japanese grammar point of view. After all, 品詞 in Japanese works quite differently from parts of speech in English. – Eddie Kal Oct 19 '21 at 01:31
  • Kinship is not related in that question. Just because we can address someone with a certain word does not mean that word is a pronoun. ("Officer!", "President!", "Girls!", "Lads!") – naruto Oct 19 '21 at 01:37
  • I’m not sure even words like 彼 and 彼女 are pronouns in the sense applied in European languages. – aguijonazo Oct 19 '21 at 01:38
  • @aguijonazo Could you elaborate on that? I think that just makes this question all the more interesting. 彼 and 彼女 are on that Wikipedia list of Japanese pronouns. – Eddie Kal Oct 19 '21 at 01:56
  • @naruto I think that's a valid point, but kinship terms are kind of unique in that they often double as proper nouns, at least in English. "Did you see my mom?" (common noun) "Where did you go, Mom?" (proper noun). But I take your point: many, if not all, common nouns can be used as names. If my spoon came to life, I'd probably call it "Spoon." – Eddie Kal Oct 19 '21 at 02:01
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    @EddieKal - They are only a few of a number of possible ways to reference a third person and are not much different from あいつ, 奴, あの人, あのお方, etc. (except they could sound more artificial). Often times it’s more natural to repeatedly reference them by their names. Substitution with pronouns in European languages, such as he, she, etc. in English, is more automatic and done on the grammatical level. – aguijonazo Oct 19 '21 at 03:47
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    In Japanese, it is more the speaker’s choice which is influenced by various factors, not least their relationships with the people referenced. Addressing someone as 娘 is also the speaker’s choice which may or may not be permitted depending on those factors. Calling all of them pronouns, or 代名詞 for that matter, seems strange to me. – aguijonazo Oct 19 '21 at 03:47
  • @aguijonazo Thank you for the explanation! I see your point, and I think that's a reasonable angle to approach this. I think the point you are making is probably part of the reason Wikipedia has this line: "Pronouns have traditionally been regarded as one of the parts of speech, but some modern theorists would not consider them to form a single class, in view of the variety of functions they perform cross-linguistically." From what I understand, 代名詞 is not one of the ten 品詞の種類 in the framework of Japanese school grammar. So maybe the real question should be "What exactly is 代名詞?" Idk... – Eddie Kal Oct 19 '21 at 04:08
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    Collins uses a term 'vocative nouns'. I don't know if this is widely accepted. – sundowner Oct 19 '21 at 06:46
  • @EddieKal, re: "what exactly is 代名詞", see also https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/代名詞, and search the page for "日本語" to get those aspects of 代名詞 that are specific to Japanese. Broadly, what constitutes a "pronoun" for Japanese depends in large part on how you define what a "pronoun" is. – Eiríkr Útlendi Oct 19 '21 at 17:23

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