A Comparative Study of Ainu Dialects Based on Old Documents

今年我们主要调查了一份名为“Ezoki”的旧文件。我们的研究结果如下。首先，我们明确了18世纪阿伊努语的语音特征，因为现在的/h/对应于材料中代表/p/的字母，我们可以假设/h/可能来自其他音素。同样地，/a/经常对应于表示/o/的字母，这也意味着有一个声音的变化。其次，我们已经明确了一个事实，即存在着丰富多样的社会语言学变异，有证据表明，根据不同的情况，同一指涉物可以用许多不同的词来称呼。第三，我们已经证明，这些材料有助于破译当代阿伊努人材料的困难线条。例如，在著名的《阿伊努人的神史诗选集》（Ainu sin'yoshu）中，只有使用这种材料才能正确地解释一些困难的表达。

We have investigated mainly an old document called "Ezoki" this year. The results of our research are as follows. First, we have made clear phonetic characteristics of the Ainu language in the eighteenth century since the current /h/ corresponds to letters representing /p/ in this material, we can assume that /h/ might come from some other phoneme. Similarly, /a/ often corresponds to letters representing /o/ and this also implies that there was a sound change. Second, we have made clear the fact that there were a rich variety of sociolinguistic variations there is evidence that the same referent was called by many different words according to the situation. Third, we have shown that this material serves to decipher difficult lines of contemporary materials of Ainu. For example, a number of difficult expressions in the famous "Ainu sin'yoshu" [an Anthology of Ainu Epics of Gods] could be interpreted correctly only by making use of this material.