Main Descriptive Grammar and Diachrony of Kurima: A Minority South Ryukyuan Language of the Miyako Islands

Descriptive Grammar and Diachrony of Kurima: A Minority South Ryukyuan Language of the Miyako Islands

Name: Descriptive Grammar and Diachrony of Kurima: A Minority South Ryukyuan Language of the Miyako Islands
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ISBN: 9789004680548

Aleksandra Jarosz

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Spoken on Kurima, a miniscule island in the Miyakojima municipality in Okinawa Prefecture, Japan, Kurima-Miyako is a South Ryukyuan topolect, a regional variant of the Miyako language. With most fluent speakers aged 80 or older and the island's depopulation progressing, the topolect of Kurima faces imminent extinction, a reflection of a common pattern in the Ryukyus, whereupon the vernaculars of small islands and isolated remote areas have been facing multifold minorization for decades on the part of the dominant variety/varieties of the area (Shimoji and Hirara in the case of Kurima), Okinawan, and standard Japanese. Responding to the urgent task of producing a comprehensive description while it still has native speakers, the present volume is the first ever attempt at a systemic presentation of the Kurima topolect in any language. It also uses comparative evidence from Ryukyuan and Mainland Japonic languages to provide new proto-language reconstructions and offer insights into the history of Japonic languages.

Request Code : ZLIBIO4452648

Categories:

Volume:

Year:

2024

Edition:

Publisher:

Brill

Language:

English

Pages:

755