Miyako Language

本稿では、上代中央語におけるヤ行のエ・ア行のエの区別、すなわちエ甲・エ乙の区別との歴史的な関係を中心に、日琉祖語に遡れるという宮古語来間方言の保守的な要素を紹介する。その環境は主に宮古祖語の*a で始まる二重母音である。
他の宮古諸方言における二重母音ai が来間方言の長母音eːに相当する場合を検討する。宮古諸方言と上代中央語との比較を通して、areː「洗え」のように、来間方言の命令形はエ甲に対応する痕跡を保っていると論じる。一方、宮古語多良間方言において長母音eːが現れるのは接続形 ― 已然形対応形 ― である。これは上代中央語の命令形にエ甲、已然形にエ乙が現れていたような、日琉祖語から継承した区別と思われる。宮古祖語で前者を*aje、後者を*ae と再建する。さらに、来間方言の受身・可能形に-ari と-reːという２形式があり、これらも甲乙の区別に相当し、上代の-ru と-je 形式に対応しているとする。

Николай Невский: жизнь и наследие: сборник статей / сост. и отв. ред. Е. С. Бакшеев и В. В. Щепкин; Ин-т восточных рукописей РАН, Российский ин-т культурологии. — СПб. : Филологический факультет СПбГУ, 2013. — 292 с., ил.
ISBN 978-5-8465-1255-9
В сборник вошли статьи отечественных и зарубежных ученых, основанные на докладах, представленных в рамках «Невских чтений» — международного симпозиума в честь 120-летия со дня рождения выдающегося российского востоковеда Николая Александровича Невского (1892–1937). Проблематика статей определена разносторонним характером исследований, которым посвятил себя ученый: мифология, синто, айноведение, язык и культура Рюкю, тангутоведение и др.

In this paper the author will provide her own proposal of a “civil” (usable by speakers, as opposed to IPA-based transcriptions used by linguists) notation of Miyako-Ryukyuan, a severely endangered Japonic language spoken in the southern part of the Ryukyu Archipelago, Japan. Two main aspects will be accordingly taken in the consideration. The aspect of maximum representation (Wedekind, Wedekind 1997) concerns maintaining a minimal grapheme inventory while keeping a maximal efficacy of the system, which involves a rule of “one phoneme per one grapheme” and the reverse, avoiding overrepresentations, underrepresentations and diacritics. The maximum transfer aspect assumes that literacy in minority language should facilitate a user’s fluency in the dominant language and the reverse; therefore, for example, a notation based on one of Japanese transliterations into Latin alphabet would presumably be preferred by Japan-born, Japan-educated, Japanese-speaking ethnic Miyakoans to an unfamiliar IPA-inspired alphabet. Consequently, a Miyakoan orthography in two variants, one derived from the Hepburn and the other from the kunreishiki transliteration of Japanese, will be suggested. Advantages and disadvantages of both proposals with respect to the rules of orthography development will be covered, with a special emphasis on which Miyakoan phonemes are most difficult to represent, and which systemic features of Miyakoan appear most divergent from Japanese in terms of inventing an orthography.

An edited extract from Nikolay Nevskiy's Miyako Hoogen Nooto focusing on medical vocabulary. All of the content has been translated into Japanese, and the parts originally written in Japanese have been rewritten using modern Japanese orthography.

The paper examines conditioned changes that occurred in Miyakoan (mostly Proto-Miyakoan) reflexes of Proto-Ryukyuan close vowels *i and *u after the unconditioned raising of Proto-Ryukyuan *e and *o had
taken place. These changes in close vowels are interpreted here as chain shifts. The core assumption is that changes in *i and *u occurred in response to the raising of *e and *o in order to avoid or compensate for the functionally damaging merger of *i/*e and *u/*o.
The paper shows that there is a rather wide range of conditions under which *i and *u produced distinct reflexes in Miyakoan. Consequently, these vowels acted differently after stops, after sibilants, after nasals, in
an onsetless/standalone position, after the flap, before the flap, and before nasals and other sonorants word-initially.
At the same time, reflexes of both proto-vowels have been observed to maintain certain symmetry, meaning that in a similar environment, *i and *u generally underwent similar or analogical changes. Thus, the conditions for identifying Miyakoan reflexes or *i and *u are listed and specified in this paper. Conversely, it is argued that unless one of these conditions has been met, one should reconstruct a Proto-Ryukyuan
mid-vowel rather than a close vowel. Such specification may influence the comparative study of Ryukyuan languages to a significant degree, challenging a number of the so far established reconstructions
(most notably Thorpe 1983).

Nikolai A. Nevsky’s most important work in Ryūkyūan studies, Materials for the Study of the Miyako Islands Dialect (also known as Notes on the Miyako dialects), is a unique encyclopedia of the Miyako and of other Ryūkyūan languages and folklore (originally it also included a “Grammatical section”). This voluminous manuscript is still incomprehensible to the general research community. For a number of years (in 2011–12 as a Japan Foundation fellow) the author pursued research on and transcription and translation of that work. He reports on his recent launch of an international project to publish an edited and annotated version of the same work.
The author describes the manuscript housed at the IOM RAS
(St. Petersburg) and the other related materials from Russian
and Japanese archives. He argues that any scholarly edition
should include major related data. He also illustrates an example of a section of the glossary, that on marriage institutions and ceremonies, taken from the manuscript.

The present paper discusses the category of adjectives and its multiple
derivates in Miyako-Ryukyuan (Miyakoan), an endangered Japonic language from the Sakishima-Ryukyuan subgroup. The analysis is centered on the Hirara regiolect and is based on examples retrieved from Nikolay Nevskiy’s handwritten lexicographic field notes (Nevskiy 2013; Jarosz 2015), supported and supplemented by modern research on a number of Miyakoan regiolects (such as Shimoji 2008 and 2011, or Aoi 2015). For reasons listed in the paper, Miyakoan adjectives are identified here as the bare root forms, even though their morphosyntactic independence may be considered disputable. Their main derivates are reduplicated adjectives, here also called adjectival nominals due to their morphosyntactically nominal characteristics. Four other lexical class-changing derivates are subsequently discussed. These are: verbalized adjectives, nominalized adjectives, adverbialized adjectives, and phrases with function noun munu. Examples of each of these classes are presented with a focus on their syntactic properties. The description is followed by a brief contrastive discussion of adjectival categories in two largest relatives of Miyakoan, Japanese and Okinawan. The paper concludes with a comparison of the described adjective-derived classes, considering both their discrepancies and overlap areas. Citing Shimoji (2008), in certain instances differences in information structure marking or in semantics – dynamic versus stative – are considered relevant. Not all classes, however, can be clearly explained in terms of functional differentiation as of now. It is hypothesized that like in the cousin languages of Japanese or Okinawan, these distinctions may be motivated by grammaticalized dimensions such as mood or evidentiality.

An edited extract from Nikolay Nevskiy's Miyako Hoogen Nooto focusing on adjectives and property concept stems. All of the content has been translated into Japanese, and the parts originally in Japanese have been rewritten using modern Japanese orthography.

This paper provides a comparative analysis of Old Japanese negative forms of bigrade verbs and their cognates in Sakishima/South Ryukyuan languages. South Ryukyuan cognates of bigrade verbs in their negative forms, as well as a number of other forms traditionally associated with the irrealis (mizenkei, 未然形) base, essentially present two suffixes: one, a straightforward cognate with the analogous suffixes elsewhere in Japonic, being traceable to Proto-Sakishima *-en-, the other being traceable to Proto-Sakishima *-on-, with no clear Japonic cognates. My argument is that despite the appearances, this *-en-/*-on-alternation is not a result of a Sakishima innovation, but instead is rooted in Proto-Japonic morphology of vowel verbs. By applying the rules of vowel crasis and contraction known for Proto-Japonic and Old Japanese, I postulate the proto-language coexistence of two forms of verbal negation: one derived from the Proto-Japonic ancestor of nominalized (one of the functions of the ren'yōkei 連用形) and the other from the finite (shūshikei 終止形) base forms. I conclude that the former was broadly distributed throughout the Proto-Japonic area, while the latter was confined to the regions that eventually bore Proto-Sakishima speakers.

Mizue Tanaka
WHY NEVSKY AIMED AT THE MIYAKO ISLANDS?
A NEW APPROACH BASED ON E. POLIVANOV’S WORK
AND UNKNOWN ARTICLE BY A. WIRTH
The paper reports on the very roots of N. Nevsky’s interest
in Miyako Islands, especially concerning the influence of
the Russian linguist Evgeny D. Polivanov (1891–1938) and the
German researcher Albrecht Wirth (1866–1936).
Wirth was the first who recorded in 1897 a considerable
number of words from the different Ryukyuan languages, especially
from Miyako (“Neue Liu-kiu Mundarten” // Zeitschrift
für afrikanische und oceanische Sprachen/1900 Berlin). Polivanov
quoted these Miyakoan examples and wrote that “Miyakoan
language is the most conservative which preserves (ancient)
phoneme p” (“Essay in the Comparative Phonetics of Japanese
and Ryukyuan languages” 1914).
One can hypothesize that this phrase and Wirth’s Miyakoan
vocabulary led Nevsky to Miyako
(Перевод с японского языка Е. Бакшеева)

The purpose of the present paper is to introduce the legacy of Nikolay A. Nevskiy’s studies of Miyakoan regiolects from the angle of ethnolinguistics/linguistic anthropology , a field that was established roughly in the times when Nevskiy conducted his Miyakoan research.
Although the use of term “ethnolinguistics” would be an anachronism when describing Nevskiy’s linguistic research, it can be argued that Nevskiy’s methodology reflected a number of notions which are of relevance also in the field in question.  Conversely, Nevskiy’s approach to language studies can be contrasted with dialectology, the framework which one could probably expect from an early 20th century student of unwritten minority languages related to a dominant language.

本稿では、2018年に行われた現地調査の中間結果に基づき、宮古語来間方言の活用体系の部分的な記述を試みる。来間方言および本調査に関する基本情報を述べた上で、来間方言における強変化動詞の終止的形式について、確認できた範囲で紹介する。形式を重視した記述方法を取り、来間方言の動詞を強変化動詞、弱変化動詞、そして不規則動詞と３つの活用グループに分類し、語幹中の音韻交替を基準に、強変化動詞をさらに３つのサブタイプに分ける。それから、肯定・否定の区別を明記しながら、非過去叙述、過去叙述、受身・可能、意志、要求・希望、命令、そして禁止、あらゆる終止用法の接尾辞を紹介する。

The present paper attempts to systematize and explain the changes in Proto-Ryukyuan (PR) vowels in a post-nasal position as observed in the lexicon of five daughter languages: Ie-Kunigamian/Okinawan, Shuri-Okinawan, Hirara-Miyakoan, Shika-Yaeyaman and Yonaguni/Dunan. The changes in question are related to the mid-vowel raising, which supposedly occurred only after the split of PR, but currently bears the markings of an unconditioned change in virtually all daughter languages.

Starting with an assumption that in some environments, the post-nasal raising of the mid-vowels led to the merger of original mid- and close vowels, while in different environments changes to the original close vowels keeps the reflexes of mid- and close vowels apart, the paper analyzes and compares Ryukyuan vocabulary containing the pertinent sound sequences of *mi, *mu, *ni and *nu, contrasting it with the reflexes of *me, *mo, *ne and *no. By scrutinizing in detail as many different environments of the sound sequences in question as possible, the paper aims to discover some patterns in the behavior of these sequences, examining both shared innovations and shared retentions among the daughter languages, observing the differences in the PR distribution of post-nasal mid-and close vowels, and entertaining the implications these findings hold for the general knowledge of PR.

An edited extract from Nikolay Nevskiy's Miyako Hoogen Nooto focusing on vocabulary related to the human body. All of the content has been translated into Japanese, and the parts originally written in Japanese have been rewritten using modern Japanese orthography.

沖縄宮古島の風習・信仰・伝承 － ニコライ・ネフスキー『宮古諸島方言研究のための資料』から －（その1～6）/
http://leit.ru/modules.php?name=Pages&pa=showpage&pid=1472, http://leit.ru/modules.php?name=Pages&pa=showpage&pid=1473,
http://leit.ru/modules.php?name=Pages&pa=showpage&pid=1474,
http://leit.ru/modules.php?
name=Pages&pa=showpage&pid=1477, http://leit.ru/modules.php?name=Pages&pa=showpage&pid=1478,
http://leit.ru/modules.php?name=Pages&pa=showpage&pid=1479, http://leit.ru/modules.php?name=Pages&pa=showpage&pid=1481
A series of research papers on believes, religion, rituals, customs and superstitions of Miyako Islands (Okinawa) based on Nikolai A. Nevsky’s most important work in Ryūkyūan studies, Materials for the Study of the Miyako Islands Dialect (also known as Notes on the Miyako dialects), a unique encyclopedia of the Miyako and of other Ryūkyūan languages and folklore.

The present paper describes the essentials of finite verb forms in Kurima-Miyako, a topolect of Miyako-Ryukyuan spoken by an estimated few dozen people on a small island named Kurima in the Miyako island group, Okinawa Prefecture. The paper introduces findings from the author's fieldwork conducted in 2018 and 2019. Following some rudimentary information on the island and its language, the paper proposes a morphologically motivated classification of Kurima verbs into three inflectional groups, and then proceeds to discuss the finite forms as so far covered by the fieldwork, namely indicative, passive/potential, volitional, desiderative, imperative and prohibitive. The synchronic description is occasionally coupled with a diachronic analysis, most importantly concerning the proto-language reflexes allegedly retained in the passive/potential and imperative forms as well as the formal distinction of the weak conjugation verbs in the predicative and attributive positions of the indicative mood.

Using source material evidence from Japanese, two Northern Ryukyuan languages: Yoron and Shuri-Okinawan, and a Southern Ryukyuan language, Miyakoan, this paper is devoted to an analysis of case-marking strategies in Japonic languages pertaining to a number of semantic roles prototypically assigned to the nominative, especially the AGENT, FORCE and EXPERIENCER. The discussion centres on the following three phenomena: the overlap of the nominative and dative-marking of the EXPERIENCER, observable mostly in potential and possessive clauses; the case-marking of the RECIPIENT (causee) in the causative and the AGENT in passive voice clauses; the marking of the active voice RECIPIENT and GIVER roles as conceptually relevant to causative and passive voice clauses.

Full text (PDF): http://www3.nacos.com/lsj/modules/documents/LSJpapers/journals/142_pellard.pdf
This article describes the converb system of the endangered Ogami Ryukyuan language. The Ogami converbs form a well-defined class, but they are problematic for the traditional definition of "converb" based on the notions of finiteness and subordination, and they thus require to revise that definition. The existence of several processes of desubordination, whereby a clause headed by a dependent verb form functions as an independent clause, is also described. Focus is put on the use of the narrative converb as an independent past tense form, which has been claimed to be a typologically rare phenomenon. The hypothesis that such a process arises in order to remedy the paucity of tense forms in a language does not hold in the case of Ogami, where the explanation must be sought in discourse pattern. The development of independent past forms out of sequential/narrative dependent forms is found to be not so rare cross-linguistically, and it thus constitutes a cross-linguistically valid evolutionary path.