On the diminutive morpheme -gama in Ikema, a Ryukyuan language

Author: Fujinaga Kiyono  

Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company

E-ISSN: 1569-9978|42|3|734-753

ISSN: 0378-4177

Source: Studies in Language, Vol.42, Iss.3, 2018-01, pp. : 734-753

Disclaimer: Any content in publications that violate the sovereignty, the constitution or regulations of the PRC is not accepted or approved by CNPIEC.

Previous Menu Next

Abstract

Ikema is defined as ‘definitely endangered’ by UNESCO (2009). The study examines an evaluative morpheme -gama used by old Ikema speakers aged 64 to 86 when speaking between Ikema speakers and when speaking Standard Japanese with outsiders. Descriptive grammar of Ikema (Hayashi 2010; Hayashi 2013 inter alia) has treated -gama as diminutive morpheme, representing smallness such as tui-gama ‘small bird’ or showing the affections to the base noun. The observations on naturally occurring data, however, revealed that the Ikema speakers barely used -gama by means of describing smallness: the most frequent use of -gama was found to be non-supplementary (Shetter 1959) and carries various socio-pragmatic functions. The related meanings/functions of -gama are presented in radial category (Lakoff 1987).