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(I hope this question is just a sanity check but these things are sometimes
worth asking.)

On p31 of the Dictionary of Intermediate Japanese Grammar, Makino tells us
that anaphoric _personal_ pronouns are limited to the third person (彼, 彼ら
etc), and would therefore exclude 私 etc.

Is this an over-generalisation (rather like his explanation of how かい is used
in the "Basic dictionary", discussed in another recent question)?
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grammar pronouns
Are anaphoric personal pronouns limited to the third person (彼, 彼ら etc)?
Over on Linguistics.SE, there's a question about the difference between deixis
and anaphora:

  * [**What is the difference between “anaphora” and “deixis”?**](https://linguistics.stackexchange.com/q/2305/)

The linguist John Lawler posted [a short
comment](https://linguistics.stackexchange.com/q/2305/#comment6226_2308) there
with a simple explanation. It's short, but in this case I think it tells you
just about everything you need to know:

> Very simple distinction: **First and Second Person are Deixis** , Third
> Person is Anaphora.

It makes sense, right? When I say _him_ or _her_ , I'm usually referring back
to someone I've already mentioned:

> I'm looking for **Jane**. Have you seen **Her**?

But when I say _you_ or _me_ , I'm usually not referring back to anything that
was previously said. Instead, you figure out what these words mean from
context, deictically:

> Hey there, **my** name's Snailboat! Would **you** like to buy a vacuum
> cleaner?

This applies to Japanese just as well. 私 and あなた and so forth typically have
deictic reference, not anaphoric.

It does seem slightly strange that Makino et al. didn't take the time to
explain this. But if you look, their top-level classification is into
"personal pronouns" and "demonstrative pronouns". Then they explicitly define
the subclass of "anaphoric personal pronouns". I don't know why they didn't go
on to talk about deixis as well--I think it would have been clearer if they
had.

Of course, the explanation above is slightly oversimplified. It's possible to
use a third-person pronoun deictically. I could specify who _she_ is by
pointing ("Hey, what's _she_ doing here?"). But generally speaking the
distinction in John Lawler's comment holds.
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answer