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Simon Ellison

Linguistics Major/International and Global Studies Minor '17

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The Yaeyama language is a language included in the Southern Ryukyuan language family in the Okinawan Islands of Japan. It is historically derived from Old Japanese and has since then been split from Standard Japanese's linguistic shift. Yaeyama is now endangered due to governmental implementations for a national language and is now only spoken in the home and by older generations (around 47,000 speakers); there are movements for revitalization. There are many dialects of the Yaeyama language, notably Hateruma, Ishigaki, Iriomote, and Miyara. Yaeyama has different phonological and grammar structures, as well as differing cognitive processes within its dialects that makes it distinguishable from Standard Japanese.

It is noted that not only are there cultural and lingual distinctions between Japan and the Ryukyuan Islands, but also between individual Ryukyuan islands, in which there are "distinct identities" (such as Yaeyaman yeeyamapitu and Okinawan uchinanchu) .Yaeyama is spoken in Iishigaki, Taketomi, Kohama, Kuroshima, Hatoma, Aragusuku, Iriomote and Hateruma, with complications of mutual intelligibility as a result of the Yaeyama islands' large geographic span.

History
The Ryukyuan languages are argued to have been split from Proto-Japanese in 2 B.C.E. The Yaeyaman languages are classified under a Macro-Yaeyama branch of the Southern Ryukyuan languages. Innovations of Southern Ryukyuan languages, splitting Macro-Yaeyama and Miyako language families, include an "irregular shift from tone class B to A" in 'how many' and a special form for 'garden'. Macro-Yaeyama innovations, grouping together Yaeyama languages and Dunan, contain the "grammaticalization of 'know' as a potential auxiliary", similarities between multiple special forms such as "bud", "happy", "fresh", and "dirt", as well as a semantic conflation of "nephew" to mean either "nephew" or "niece" .Yaeyaman dialects are differentiated from Dunan by innovations regarding a replacement of the verb "sell" with a causative form of "buy", a special form of "get wet", as well as an irregular shift of "*g>n" in 'beard'.

Hateruma
The Hateruma dialect contains seven vowels, with no distinction between long-short vowel length, and sixteen consonants. Hateruma is noted for having more vowels than any other dialect. There a pharyngealized e present in Hateruma; this has been argued to be a result of "the coalescence of proto-Yaeyama dipthongs "*ai and *aɨ".

There are three accent pitches present in Hateruma: Falling, Level, and Rising accents. To correlate pitches, there are three classes of words under an "A,B,C" system; class A words correlate with falling pitch, and class B and C are shown to have "an uneven correspondence with the Level and Rising patterns".

Hatoma
The Hatoma dialect contains two "tonal categories" denoted as marked and unmarked.Words of the marked class are analyzed as being "high from the syllable containing the second mora", whereas unmarked words begin from a low pitch word-initially and also end with a low pitch ."Peripheral tone classes" are also noted in certain nouns and adverb.

Hatoma is noted for having the simplest verb conjugation and morphophonology of the Yaeyama dialects. A phonological process included is a sequence of i-e becoming e in the case of i being in a light syllable and ja(a) in a heavy syllable. There is also a process of a u-a sequence becoming a long o with u in a light syllable, and uwa(a) on a final heavy syllable.

Miyara
Miyara has 21 consonants and 6 vowels in its inventory. It is noted that e and o exist only as long vowels.

Hateruma
Hateruma employs morphology and suffixation in its verbs and adjectives. Derivational morphology expresses causative and passive forms in verbs; potential forms are equal to the passive form. Verbal inflection expresses two types of indicatives, an imperative form, as well as a cohortative and prohibitive ending. Adjectives, nouns and verbs also compound and reduplicate, especially in producing adverbs from adjectives.

Hateruma has a case system with nine case markings and particles. There are nearly twelve auxiliary verbs which denote forms of mood and aspect.

Ishigaki
The Ishigaki dialect is noted for having a peculiar expression of cardinal directions. It is found that when speaking to other native speakers, Ishigaki speakers use an "intrinsic" and "relative" frame of reference system, in which "north" and "south" are expressed in an intrinsic frame of reference as the verbs agaru ("go up,climb") and oriru ("go down, descend"), instead of Standard Japanese kita ("north") and minami ("south") .It is found that a majority of speakers express "east" and "west" as Standard Japanese hidari ("left") and migi ("right") in a relative frame of reference.

Miyara
Miyaran Yaeyama has been argued to have no marked attributive form, unlike Okinawan and Old Japanese. However, there is evidence that phonological conditioning, namely an epenthetic -r marking between present stative -i and present tense marker -u (in order to avoid subsequent vowel sequences), accounts for non-overt attributive markings.

Endangerment & Revitalization
The endangerment of Ryukyuan languages is attributed to historical and governmental factors. Originating in the 1872 annexation of the Okinawan Islands to Japan and the creation of an Okinawan Prefecture in 1879, there has since been a movement referred to as the "Japanization of the Luchuan Islands". A national language movement known as kokugo has developed in result of this.The kokugo movement includes the 1907 implementation of the Ordinance of Dialect Regulation, demoting diverse Ryukyuan languages to the status of "dialects" (hogen) and discouraging of speaking these dialects in the Japanese school system.

There is estimated to be a remaining 7,000-10,000 Yaeyama speakers, mostly being spoken in the home. There have been many revival societies and movements erected to preserve Ryukyuan languages and culture. The earliest language revival movement is regarded as being part of the Koza Society of Culture, instituted in 1955. A large benefactor to preserving and reviving Ryukyuan languages is the Society for Spreading Okinawan (Uchinaguchi fukyu kyogikai), whose constitution is dedicated to initiating dialect classes and Okinawan teacher training programs, as well as advancing towards a singular Okinawan orthography. There are also notable submovements in Ryukyuan language survival present in Okinawan radio broadcasts, as well as "presentation circles and plays" and language classes integrated in the Okinawan school curriculum on the local level.