天草諸方言のアクセント資料の提示と新しいアプローチに基づいた西南部九州諸方言の系統分析の試み

要旨

This study is aimed at 1) to describe the accent of nouns in the Amakusa dialects of Japanese on the basis of our fieldwork study performed in seven villages in the Amakusa islands, Kumamoto Prefecture, Japan, 2) to propose a novel approach to the phylogenetic study of Japanese dialects based on their accent systems, and 3) by means of this approach, to investigate the phylogenetic position of the Amakusa dialects among the south-west Kyushu dialects. The results of our analysis revealed that goma 'sesame', nizi 'rainbow', kinoo 'yesterday', kokoro 'heart', and mado 'window' showed irregular accentual correspondences with other (non-Kyushu) Japanese dialects. The irregularity found in the former three nouns is shared by most of the south-west Kyushu dialects, whereas that in the last noun mado is shared only by the Amakusa dialects. On the basis of the results we proposed a tentative tree that indicates the phylogenetic position of the Amakusa dialects.

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