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The Prehistory of a Northern Ryukyuan Dialect of Japanese

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The Prehistory of a Northern Ryukyuan Dialect of Japanese ABSTRACT SHODON:. THE PREHISTORY OF A NORTHERN RYUKYUAN DIALECT OF JAPANESE Leon Angelo Serafim Yale UnJversity 1984 The Ryukyuan dialects of Japanese are important not only in reconstructing the linguistic prehistory of the Japanese language but also for their internal history, that is, for what can be discovered about their history quite apart from what is known about the history of any other Japanese dialects. The main focus of this dissertation is on the latter question, particularly with regard to the dialect Shodon of the northern Ryukyus. The approach is internal reconstruction, utilizing the rich morphophonemics of the dialect. The reconstruction is based on alternations in noun shape due to the addition of enclitics, and on the morphophonemics of the Shodon adjective and verb subtypes. Detailed discussion of sound changes and sound-change orderings is given, and many words are reconstructed insofar as that is possible. It is hoped that this internal reconstruction using Shodon can be linked to other reconstructions in order to come up with a detailed view of the prehistory of Ryukyuan and, further, to form a link to the prehistory of the mainland Japanese dialects. Shodon: The Prehistory of a Northern Ryukyuan Dialect of Japanese A Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Yale University in Candidacy for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy by Leon Angelo Serafim May 1984 TABLE OF CONTENTS PREFACE ••• . • • ii Chapter page I. INTRODUCTION . 1 Place of Shodon Dialect. 1 Shodon Dialect Data ••• • • • . 2 The Method of Internal Reconstruction ••••••••••• 3 Internal Reconstruction of Shodon Dialect ••••••••• 4 The Utility of an Internal Reconstruction of Shodon •••• 5 Hattori's Ryukyuan A: B Distinction ••••••••••• 6 II. SHODON NOUNS . 7 Preliminaries . • • • . 7 Changes Inferred from Nouns • . • • • 25 III. SHODON ADJECTIVES ••• . 69 Adjective-Stem Shape Alternations and Their Sources •••• 69 Adjective Derivational Morphology ••••••••••••• 91 Adjective Conjugations ••••••••••••••••• 102 IV. SHODON VERBS . 127 Main Conjugation Types ••••••••••••••••• 127 The Historical Development of the Infinitive •••••• 129 The Historical Development of the Imperfect ••••••• 140 The Historical Development of the Perfect •••••••• 145 Verbs with Imperfects in +00-+m • • • • • • • • • • • • • 154 Verb-Classification Realignments: Vowel Stem and r- Stem Verbs ••••••••••••••••••••• 164 Two-Consonant C-Stem Verbs • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • 168 v. CONCLUSION . 183 - V - Appendix page A. NOUN LISTS . 188 BIBLIOGRAPHY . 218 vi LIST OF TABLES Table page 1. Monosyllabic Word Types . •• 33 2. Dissyllabic Word Types . • • 34 3. Trisyllabic Word Types . • • 35 4. Tetrasyllabic Word Types ••••••••••••••• . • • 36 5. Sound Changes of *f to *h(w(y)) •••••••••••• • • • • • 9 5 6. Shodon Verb Types and Subtypes . 128 7. Infinitive-Gerund Correspondences ••••••••••••••• 136 vii Chapter I INTRODUCTION This dissertation largely consists of the internal reconstruction of Shodon, a dialect of the Amami islands, which are situated in the northernmost part of the Ryukyus, an arc of islands strewn between the southernmost Japanese mainland island of Kyushu and the island of Taiwan to the southwest. 1.1 PLACE OF SHODON DIALECT Shodon is a typical member of the Setouchi subgroup of the Amami Oshima group of the Amami dialects, the northernmost dialect group of Ryukyuan. The core dialects of the Setouchi subgroup can be found within the political subdivision of Setouchi-ch6, which encompasses the most southerly portion of Amami Oshima--the main island of the Amami chain, as well as in the immediately south-lying Kakeroma island--which hugs the southern Amami-Oshima coast, creating an inland sea--and the two much smaller outliers to the south, Uke and Yoro. Shodon village is in the easternmost portion of Kakeroma island, on a bay facing south. - 1 - 2 1.2 SH0DON DIALECT DATA All the data for Shodon dialect used in this study have come from a single informant, Kanehisa Tadashi.(l) Besides himself authoring a very interesting and informative book on the language and culture of Amami (Kanehisa 1963), he has served as informant on Shodon dialect for Samuel E. Martin, Hattori Shiro, and Uemura Yukio. Martin was the first of these investigators to work with Kanehisa, in 1954, but his work did not see publication until sixteen years later (Martin 1970). A general survey of the Amami islands was made in the late 1950's by the Kyugakkai Rengo (the Union of Nine Learned Societies), the linguistic part of which was undertaken by Hattori Shiro, Uemura Yukio, and Tokugawa Munemasa. Together they published two studies of the Amami dialects, referred to herein as HUT 1959A and HUT 1959B. Hattori and Uemura both worked with Kanehisa at different times. The Shodon words in HUT 1959A were collected by Hattori, while those in HUT 1959B were collected by Uemura. Hattori has used Shodon data that he collected in many other articles as well, most notably in Hattori 1960, a very careful look at various conclusive forms of Shodon verbs and adjectives. Uemura has also discussed Shodon dialect forms elsewhere (Uemura 1959, 1962), contributing important data about accentual tunes of atonic words. Most recently Matsumoto Hirotake (1982) has been contributing data and linguistic observations about Shodon dialect. I have not yet seen two of his earlier articles on Shodon. (1) I give Japanese names in Japanese order, family name first. Kanehisa's name is also often pronounced Kaneku. 3 1.3 THE METHOD OF INTERNAL RECONSTRUCTION Internal reconstruction is one of several methods for reconstructing the earlier stages of languages.(2) It can be used within a single dialect or language if the dialect or language has morphophonemic alternation. The technique strives as much as possible to reconcile the related alternants of a morpheme--to give historical starting points in which there is no allomorphy. The inferred sound changes can be dated in respect to each other insofar as their effects interfere with each other. Typically, not all sound changes can be put into a relative chronology. In addition, the method pays attention to the patterning of segments in the whole phonology, and such patterning is taken into account in the reconstruction. I use such patterning in my reconstruction of the raising of non-high vowels in Shodon by one height position, and in the related fronting and unrounding of *u after *t, *d, and *s. It is not possible to guarantee that the result of internal reconstruction will be a synchronically homogeneous entity; that is to say, the resultant reconstruction may very well reflect facts from different periods of the history of the language. This is because the method of internal reconstruction retrieves only that for which there is evidence. If a change has left no trace, it is undetectable, and thus it cannot be brought to bear in the reconstruction. Such changes can often be detected, however, through application of the comparative (2) For a concise and clear introduction to internal reconstruction, see Jeffers and Lehiste 1979:37-54. 4 method, where formally equivalent lexical items in different dialects or languages are compared in order to retrieve sound changes and reconstruct earlier forms. 1.4 INTERNAL RECONSTRUCTION OF SHODON DIALECT My intent in doing an internal reconstruction of Shodon dialect is to provide a detailed set of sound changes and pre-forms(3) as a kind of "core sample" of Ryukyuan language history. Insofar as any other Ryukyuan dialect conforms in its own set of sound changes to those of Shodon, it can be expected that the reconstruction (both sound changes and pre-forms) proposed here will be helpful in reconstructing its own set of internal changes, and insofar as it does not conform, this reconstruction will be less helpful. The pre-Shodon forms reconstructed here will ultimately require considerable modification to fit in with data from other dialects. It should also be noted that no claim is made that pre-Shodon is the same or should be the same as proto-Ryukyuan, the reconstruction that would result from the comparison of a number of representative Ryukyuan dialects. Some parts of the reconstruction do not reach back that far (for example the near-total inability to reconstruct diphthongal origins for some pre-Shodon *~~ and *99, as opposed to the appearance of diphthongal descendants of those original diphthongs in some Miyako dialects); some parts reach back even further. (3) I use the word "pre-form" to refer to an internally reconstructed earlier form of a presently existing lexical item, morpheme, or part of a lexical item. As such it is the equivalent of the word "proto-form" for comparatively reconstructed items. 5 1.5 THE UTILITY OF AN INTERNAL RECONSTRUCTION OF SHODON Ryukyuan dialects have long been used in comparison with Japanese mainland dialects, including those earlier dialects such as Old Kyoto or Old Japanese that are preserved only in written documents. Generally the intent has been to come to a better understanding of the prehistory of the language. But most attempts to use Ryukyuan as a clarification of prehistory have suffered from the overwhelming tendency to view Japanese mainland data, especially those in written records, as primary, and to view Ryukyuan as strictly secondary. Generally, few attempts have been made to take the Ryukyuan evidence at face value, and any such attempts have been hindered by the great variety of Ryukyuan dialects, and by the thickly layered accretion of sound changes
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