earticle

영어

The existential verbs Iru(いる), Aru(ある), and Oru(おる) in modern Japanese diverge in usage and meaning, depending on the speakers’ ages and regional dialects, and linguistic or extralinguistic factors. Based on the colloquial New Testament published by the Japanese Bible Association, the present paper tried to analyze the intended meanings of Oru(おる) from the linguistic perspective. It is found that Oru(おる) patterns in meaning together with the Honorific II class (謙譲語 Ⅱ (Kenjyougo II) or Teityougo(丁重語) in Middle Japanese rather than the so-called speaker-respecting pompous term Sodaigo(尊大語) class or the listener-despising vulgar Hibago(卑罵語) class. It is also found that the Reru(レル)-type honorific Ora-reru(おられる) and its speaker-respecting Teineitai(丁寧體)-type Ora-re-masu(おられます) replaced Irassyaru(いらっしゃる) and Irassyai-masu(いらっしゃいます) for a neutral honorific expression in contrast with a super honorific O-ide-ni-naru(おいでになる) and as a result, turned out to be neutral in the intended usage. Therefore, the intended meanings of Ora-reru(おられる) and Ora-re-masu(おられます) in the colloquial New Testament were different from the ones used currently in the Western Japanese Dialects or Tokyo Dialect.