A Descriptive Study of Minna-Ryukyuan, on Verbs and Adjectives

2016 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 15H06807
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Research Activity Start-up
• Allocation Type: Single-year Grants
• Research Field: Linguistics
• Research Institution: Okinawa International University
• Principal Investigator: KOJIMA Kayoko (下地賀代子) 沖縄国際大学, 総合文化学部, 准教授 (40586517)
• Project Period (FY): 2015-08-28 – 2017-03-31
• Keywords: 南琉球 / 文法記述 / 水納島方言 / 多良間方言

Outline of Final Research Achievements

Minna is a highly endangered language spoken in Minna island, which is located between Ishigaki and Miyako islands in Okinawa prefecture. There are very few studies on Minna and they only highlight some phonological differences between Minna and Tarama. The author’s previous project “A Descriptive Study of Minna-Ryukyuan, an Endangered Dialect of Southern-Ryukyuan Languages (KAKEN.23720240)” described Minna’s Case marking system, some morphophonological features, the verb conjugation system and the kinship terms of Minna, and revealed differences from Tarama.
The current project aimed to describe Minna’s grammatical system of adjectives. The results include the basic structure and the conjugation classes, and systematic description of the differences in the usage of three forms,i-conclusive form (e.g. takasja:i), du merged-conclusive form (e.g. takasjada:i), and root＋munu (e.g. taka=munu).

Free Research Field

琉球語