Space in Time: Diachrony of Goal-Participant Marking in Ryukyuan Languages

要旨

The purpose of the paper is a typological and diachronic study of goal-participant marking in Ryukyuan languages, with goal-participants understood as the participants encoding semantic and syntactic notions typically associated with indirect object, such as Recipient, passive agent, and causee. The study focuses on dative-spatial case polysemy, considering how in Ryukyuan languages G-participants are typically marked either by dative-locative or dative-allative markers. As a result of an examination of over twenty Ryukyuan topolects by studying language documentation examples of encoding of a wide semantic range of G-participants, Ryukyuan languages have been divided into three synchronic types with a range of subtypes, which also reflect a diachronic process of a transition from dative-locative to dative-allative marking. The process is explained as semantically motivated, and conceptualisation of G-participants as ‘destinations’ of a vectored movement is identified as the main factor of first locative/allative variation, and then a potential domination of allative in G-participant-marking.

主題