14 Number in Japonic Family

要旨

This chapter gives an overview of the number systems of the Japonic language family, examining Standard Japanese (SJ), Japanese mainland dialects and Ryukyuan languages. For the latter two, our focus will be on the Shiiba dialect of Kyushu and on the Irabu dialect of Miyako Ryukyuan, drawing on the field data collected by the present author. Generally speaking, Japonic language varieties exhibit common features such as (a) the number marking system sensitive to animacy, (b) the relevance of the category ‘address noun’, a class of lexical nouns which can be used as terms of address, including proper names and elder kin terms, and (c) the system of classifiers according to which referents are counted. On the other hand, Japonic language varieties vary with respect to, for example, the presence or absence of clusivity distinction (which is only found in Ryukyuan), and the interplay between plural marking and individuation (e.g. definiteness); while pluralization in SJ is limited to the individuated (definite) nouns, this is not the case in Shiiba.

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