Reconsidering the Change of Verbal Conjugation Systems in Tokunoshima Dialects: The Prohibitive Form as Another Proof
Reconsidering the Change of Verbal Conjugation Systems in Tokunoshima Dialects: The Prohibitive Form as Another Proof

Summary/Abstract: The author was involved in the analysis of verbal conjugation system of a Tokunoshima dialect, which belongs to Ryukyu dialects of Japanese language. The study is part of the research of making a dialect dictionary in Tokunoshima. Fukushima (2017) discussed the reorganization of verbal conjugation systems in the dialects on the Tokunoshima Island, by comparing two local systems and examining geographical distributions of a particular verb form. The adverbial form was used as a key to show the on-going change. In this paper, the prohibitive form is used as another proof to show the variation on the island and to describe the reorganization of verbal conjugation systems in the dialects. The reorganization process of verbal conjugation systems in Tokunoshima is illustrated by using linguistic maps with a focus on the prohibitive form as well as the adverbial form. The newly drawn maps based on the 1977 Okamura survey data show clearly demarcated distributions, which demonstrate that the forms with a vowel-ending verb stem are older than those with an r-ending verb stem.

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