Send message to Author

Paper short abstract

By examining vowel correspondences across the Japonic languages, this paper argues that /oː/ existed in the earlier Naha vowel system and was raised and merged with /uː/ before the monophthongization: ai, ae > eː and au, ao > oː. Conversely, the evidence suggests that the vowel /eː/ was not raised.

Paper long abstract

The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether vowel raising occurred in the mid-long vowels (/eː/ and /oː/) of the Naha dialect of Okinawan, one of the Ryukyuan languages spoken throughout the Ryukyu archipelago in Japan.

It is widely accepted that Ryukyuan underwent a sound change known as Vowel Raising, in which the mid-vowels /e/ and /o/ were raised. In Okinawan specifically, these vowels were raised and merged with /i/ and /u/, respectively. Consequently, a five-vowel system (i, u, e, o, a) shifted to a three-vowel system (i, u, a). However, research on Vowel Raising has typically focused on short vowels, while long vowels have rarely been discussed.

Modern Naha possesses five long vowels (iː, uː, eː, oː, aː). It is generally believed that the mid-long vowels developed later through the monophthongization of two short vowels (ai, ae > eː and au, ao > oː). By conducting a thorough investigation into vowel correspondences across the Japonic languages, this paper argues that /oː/ existed in the earlier Naha vowel system and was raised and merged with /uː/ prior to the monophthongization. Conversely, the evidence suggests that the vowel /eː/ was not raised.

Regarding the vowel /eː/, another question remains. In modern Naha, there are some cases where /eː/ does not regularly correspond to ai or ae in Japonic cognates. A well-known example is the /eː/ in ʔaːkeːdʒuː (‘dragonfly’). While researchers have noted this irregularity, its cause remains unknown. This paper examines the history of /eː/ in this word, alongside two similar cases–naːbeːraː (‘sponge gourd’) and haːbeːruː (‘moth’)–to account for this phenomenon. Our analysis concludes that this /eː/ can be reconstructed as Proto-Ryukyuan *e. Specifically, the /eː/ was originally a short /e/ in earlier Naha that subsequently lengthened. This lengthening must have occurred before the period of Vowel Raising; otherwise, the vowel would have been raised to /i/.

Send message to Author

Paper short abstract

This paper examines the Old Japanese suffixes -(r)are- and -(r)aye- using corpus data from the Man’yōshū, norito, and senmyō. It argues that their meanings are semantically related to spontaneous intransitive constructions and identifies rare passive-like uses with inanimate subjects.

Paper long abstract

This study investigates the meanings of the suffixes -(r)are- and -(r)aye- in Old Japanese by examining their usage in the Man’yōshū, norito (ritual prayers), and senmyō (imperial edicts), using the Corpus of Historical Japanese (CHJ) developed by the National Institute for Japanese Language and Linguistics. It explores the relationship between the meanings expressed by these constructions and the spontaneous meanings associated with r-row lower bigrade (RS2) and y-row lower bigrade (YS2) intransitive verb constructions.

Previous studies have argued that -(r)are- and -(r)aye-, well known as suffixes expressing passive, non-intentional, and potential meanings, were reanalyzed as grammatical affixes through analogy with the inflectional endings of RS2 and YS2 verbs, respectively (Yanagida 1989). However, the relationship between these grammatical suffixes and intransitive verb constructions has not been examined in detail. This study proposes a hypothesis concerning the morphological extraction of the two suffixes and investigates the semantic relationship between the meanings they encode and those expressed by intransitive constructions.

The analysis shows that, although previous research has claimed that Old Japanese -(r)are- and -(r)aye- lack passive constructions with inanimate subjects (Kawamura 2012), there are a small number of instances that can be interpreted as anticausative uses corresponding to ordinary inanimate-subject passives. It is suggested that such passive-like constructions with inanimate subjects were later marginalized during the Heian period, when narrative prose written in kana flourished and texts increasingly came to be structured from a human-centered perspective, in which other uses of these suffixes became dominant.

Reference

Kawamura, Futoshi (2012) Rarukei-jutsugo-bun-no kenkyū [Studies on -(r)rare- form predicate sentences]. Tokyo, Kuroshio Publishers.

Yanagida, Masashi (1989) Jodōshi “yu/rayu”=to “ru/raru”=to=no kankei. Commemorative Anthology of Japanese Linguistics in Honor of Professor Mitsuo Okumura's Retirement. Tokyo: Ofusha (Reprint in A Historical Phonology of the Japanese Language from the Muromachi Period Onward. 1993, 717-740).

Send message to Author

Paper short abstract

Regarding pronouns in the Hachijo dialect of Japanese, this paper adds new descriptions to previous research and argues that the Hachijo dialect has a contrast between regular plurals and approximate plurals that is not found in Japanese, and that these form a hierarchical structure.

Paper long abstract

The Hachijo dialect is spoken on Hachijo Island in Tokyo, just 55 minutes from Tokyo-Haneda Airport. It is a descendant of the ancient eastern dialect of Japanese, and retains some characteristics of Japanese from a time even older than the earliest written Japanese. It is also designated as an endangered language by UNESCO.

The demonstrative pronoun system of Hachijo has been described in previous studies by Hirayama Teruo (1965) and Kaneda Akihiro (2001), among others. However, issues such as the existence of first-person plural exclusion/inclusion, or whether plural forms can be used when there is essentially one person, have not been discussed. In this presentation, I refined the description of the Hachijo dialect's demonstrative pronoun system, providing a description and analysis that included the discovery of new phenomena.

Previous research has not mentioned the fact that there is no distinction between inclusive and exclusive in first-person plurals, but I will confirm this. I will also show that some usage of second-person pronouns is currently undergoing change (simplification).

Furthermore, we report on the plural suffix "-rara," which has not been mentioned in previous studies. By combining the newly discovered plural suffix "-rara" with the known plural suffix "-ra," we organize and systematize the two series and argue that the Hachijo dialect distinguishes between regular plurals and approximate plurals.

We will also show that there is a hierarchy in the addition of plural suffixes: -rara can be used with people, animals, and interrogative pronouns, but not with the personal names or inanimate objects; -ra was once used for inanimate objects but is no longer used.It also describes ongoing systemic changes in the category.

In this presentation, I clarified that approximative plurals exist in Hachijo dialect with a hierarchical structure through a more detailed description of the pronoun system. By investigating the dialect's language system in more detail and refining the description, I can show that dialect systems, which are thought to be similar to Japanese, have characteristics not found in Japanese. This research will contribute to the high-quality preservation of Hachijo, an endangered language, and to cross-linguistic analysis.