ある方言地図の解釈

佐渡における「ねこやなぎ」の言語地理学的考察

抄録

As an experiment in linguistc geography, the writer takes up in the present paper the distribution of a variety of forms denoting salix caprea in the Island of Sado. This word may not belong to the basic Japanes vocabulary, nor can its variation constitute such an important dialectological feature as the word for “bought”, which divides Japan into two areas, one (east) with the form katta and the other (west) with the form kota. Even the conclusion about the changes the word has undergone in that island may have little significance in itself. The writer's aim here is to present the procedures that have led him to his conclusion and invite critical comments from his colleagues.
In actual field work, the writer was assisted by Mrs. Sadako Kato. They visited almost all the communities (160 communities in all) in the island except the northern region, from 1959 to 1962. In each community, they examined one informent, who was native to the community and born in the Meiji Era i. e. before 1912. As a result of the survey, 34 different forms have been recorded. If we represent these forms on the maps as they are, their distribution would look so complicated that it would be impossible to know where to draw a dividing line. Matters can be made much simpler, however, by classifying our forms into two groups, one containing the element inu ‘dog’ and one containing the element neko ‘cat’. Thus we find the ‘dog’ group distributed in the central part, and the ‘cat’ group along the seacoast.
With respect to the history of the island, we know that it was the central part that was prosperous untill the sixteenth century, and, only later, important lines of communications developed along the coast. On the other hand, the ‘dog’ group contains certain forms affected by a law of vocalic change that must have been completed in the seventeenth or eighteenth century. These two considerations have led the writer to the conclusion that the ‘dog’ group belong to an older layer than the ‘cat’ group. If so, how did some forms of the ‘dog’ group come to be replaced by those of the ‘cat’ group? In order to answer this question, the writer reconstructs an approximate process of innovation on the basis of further material provided by his map, and considers factors involved in each case.