Focus Marking Particles and Modality Types in the Ryukyuan Language(<Special Issue>Views of Ryukyuan, Views from Ryukyuan)

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  • 琉球方言の焦点化助辞と文の通達的なタイプ(<特集>琉球語を見る/琉球語から見る)
  • 琉球方言の焦点化助辞と文の通達的なタイプ
  • リュウキュウ ホウゲン ノ ショウテンカ ジョジ ト ブン ノ ツウタツテキ ナ タイプ

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Abstract

Many scholars have argued that the du particle in the Ryukyuan language and zo particle in Old Japanese texts are cognate, and have proposed that Ryukyuan has the kakari construction. This claim is based on the fact that the syntactic construction in which the particle du links to a non-conclusive conjugational form is very common in the Ryukyuan language. This is similar to the kakari construction where the particle zo takes the rentaikei or adnominal form. In Ryukyuan there are other particles that behave in the same way as the particle du. They are the ga, and kuse particles. Uchima (1985), investigating the ga particle in Naha, Nakasone (1983), looking into the particles ga and kuse in Nakijin, and Hirasawa (1985), studying the particles ga and nu in Miyako dialects, claim that Ryukyuan has a set of the kakari constructions. However contrary to their claims, by pointing out that the particles du and ga do not always require the rentaikei form or the realis form to complete the sentence, I argue that kakari constructions do not exist in Ryukyuan. Although the Ryukyuan particles in question seem to behave like the kakari particles in Old Japanese, they are not the same as far as their functions are concerned. My scrutiny of the constructions concludes that the particles in Ryukyuan are focus markers.

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