20/07/2024
DESCRIPTIVE GRAMMAR AND DIACHRONY OF KURIMA by Aleksandra JAROSZ
We are very pleased and proud to announce that the latest and really excellent publication by our Editor-in-Chief, dr Aleksandra Jarosz, entitled "Descriptive Grammar and Diachrony of Kurima.
A Minority South Ryukyuan Language of the Miyako Islands" has just been published by Brill in the series: Languages of Asia (Vol. 29).
https://brill.com/display/title/68385
There are no words to express our deep admiration! Congratulations!! We wish you further success! 😊🙂
Summary:
Spoken on Kurima, a miniscule island in the Miyakojima municipality in Okinawa Prefecture, Japan, Kurima-Miyako is a South Ryukyuan topolect, a regional variant of the Miyako language. With most fluent speakers aged 80 or older and the island’s depopulation progressing, the topolect of Kurima faces imminent extinction, a reflection of a common pattern in the Ryukyus, whereupon the vernaculars of small islands and isolated remote areas have been facing multifold minorization for decades on the part of the dominant variety/varieties of the area (Shimoji and Hirara in the case of Kurima), Okinawan, and standard Japanese. Responding to the urgent task of producing a comprehensive description while it still has native speakers, the present volume is the first ever attempt at a systemic presentation of the Kurima topolect in any language. It also uses comparative evidence from Ryukyuan and Mainland Japonic languages to provide new proto-language reconstructions and offer insights into the history of Japonic languages.
"Descriptive Grammar and Diachrony of Kurima" published on 28 Mar 2024 by Brill.
