A Grammar of Irabu, a Southern Ryukyuan Language [Doctoral Dissertation]

This thesis is a descriptive grammar of Irabu Ryukyuan (Irabu henceforth), a Southern Ryukyuan language spoken on Irabu, which is one of the Miyako Islands, Okinawa, Japan. Irabu is an endangered Japonic language, with approximately 2,000 to 2,500 native speakers. This thesis serves as the first descriptive grammar of this language and of any particular Miyako Ryukyuan language. The grammar attempts to describe all major areas of this language, covering the phonological system to the complex clause structures. It clarifies a number of phonological and morphosyntactic features that have been little known but are highly noteworthy typologically. Among these are foot-based alternating rhythm of tone features, non-canonical object marking that helps distinguish between narrative and non-narrative uses of non-finite clauses of clause chaining, and word class assignment of property concept words, where a given property concept stem is transformed into a nominal, a verb, an adjective, or an adverb, thus demonstrating a ‘switch-adjectival’ system in the sense of Wetzer’s (1996) typology.