| Budget Amount *help |
¥1,800,000 (Direct Cost: ¥1,800,000)
Fiscal Year 1988: ¥800,000 (Direct Cost: ¥800,000)
Fiscal Year 1987: ¥1,000,000 (Direct Cost: ¥1,000,000)
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| Research Abstract |
The Ainu language which has no writing system is presently on the verge of disappearance, since its speakers have been reduced to a small number of the aged. However, in spite of the fact that linguistic research on Ainu is a very important one, being related to such essential problems as the origin and the structure of the Japanese language, accurate data of descriptive nature which can become object of a linguistic analysis are scarce.
The purpose of the present research was to collect and describe data on the Sakhalin dialect of the Ainu language, (one of the theree dialects of this language, the other two being the Hokkaido and the Kurile Islands dialects) obtained directly from the last surviving speaker of this dialect.
The last person speaking Sakhalin Ainu is Asai Take, a 87 year-old blind woman, presently living in the home for the elderly people in Hidaka-Monbetsu, Hokkaido. she remembered a great number of pieces of Ainu oral literary tradition, namely folk tales and epic poems, was able to reproduce them correctly and willingly cooperated with the present researcher.
I met Asai Take when, as a researcher assigned to the research project named "Studies on Nothern Cultures arround Japan Based on Polsudski's Materials" (1984-1985, supervisor Katoo Kyuuzoo), I was travelling arround Hokkaido in search of speakers of the Sakhlin Ainu.
Asai Take, in spite of her complete blindness and age, was in good health. She reproduced for me valuable pieces of Ainu oral literature and willingly helped me to check my description.
The results thus obtained may be divided into data on (1) oral literature, e.g. falk tales, (2) basic vocabulary, (3) grammar. the first group was published as "ORAL TEXTS OF SAKHALIN AINU 1". The next two groups of data will be introdued by the present researcher later.
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