IWASAKI, Kanae
Research Associate
Research Institute for Languages and Cultures of Asia and Africa,
Tokyo University of Foreign Studies
3-11-1 Asahi-cho, Fuchu-shi,
Tokyo, 183-8534, Japan
Email: iwasaki.kanae[at]aa.tufs.ac.jp
Personal Homepage:
Research interests: Linguistics, Hawaiian
Researching Hawaiian indigenous language in their 19th to 20th centuries
I have been studying Hawaiian grammar since I was undergraduate student. Hawaiian is one of the Austronesian language, which in tern belongs to the Eastern Polynesian language group. The language was used by indigenous people on daily basis until early 20th century, but it was replaced by English as political and economic power of Western countries increased. Since 1970s, though, through so-called Hawaiian Renaissance and great effort by Hawaiian people, the number of Hawaiian speakers has been increasing again, even though it is still considered as one of the endangered languages today.
Though Hawaiian is originally oral culture, today we can consult relatively large quantity of Hawaiian text written or printed from 18th to early 20th centuries. These are the precious data which shows what kinds of language Hawaiian used to be when local people lived using their ancestral language. The data include Hawaiian folklore, local newspapers, administrative documents and so on. With these resources, I would like to describe many yet-to-be-unexplained aspects of Hawaiian grammar, especially the distribution and nature of its functional words in detail.
Research Interests:
Currently I am interested in spatial expressions in Hawaiian, especially demonstratives and directionals. In addition, I want to study archiving of texts in endangered languages.
Research Projects:
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