Jeju Island, located about 30 miles southwest of the Korean mainland, is famous for its natural beauty, dolhaleubang ("stone grandfather") statues, haenyeo ("sea women") divers-and its language, which has only recently been recognized as distinct from Korean. This finding-still considered controversial-undermines the centuries-old belief that Korea has a single language within its borders and opens the door to an entirely new perspective on linguistic diversity in East Asia.Jejueo: The Language of Korea's Jeju Island offers both an introduction to the language and the foundation for a wave of new research on its many unique features. Through its comprehensive approach, the book helps establish the importance of Jejueo to the cultural and linguistic heritage of not only Jeju Island, but also the entire Korean peninsula. After a brief introductory chapter on the history of the island and its culture, the authors work their way through the language step by step, examining its sounds, part-of-speech system, and rich inventory of suffixes for both nouns and verbs, to which several chapters are devoted. Carefully written to minimize technical language and supplemented with hundreds of examples, the work is intended to be accessible to scholars working in all fields of Korean studies.Jejueo tells the story of a language that has been under wraps for far too long and is now in peril. After centuries of use as the first language of the island, only a few thousand elderly fluent speakers remain, leading UNESCO to classify Jejueo as "critically endangered" in 2010. As the first full-length treatment of Jejueo in English, this book marks a milestone in Korean studies and is sure to trigger extensive discussion of the language and its place in Korean society.

• Contents
• Figures and Tables
• Acknowledgments
• Abbreviations and Translation Convention
• 1
  • Jeju Island and Its Language
    • 1. The Beginning
    • 2. History and Culture
    • 3. The Language
    • 4. Classifying Jejueo
    • 5. The Koreanic Language Family
    • 6. Jejueo Today
    • 7. The Book
• 2
  • Phonology and Orthography
    • 1. Introduction
    • 2. Phonemes
    • 3. Orthography
    • 4. Phonological Processes
• 3
  • Nouns
    • 1. Introduction
    • 2. Basic Nouns
    • 3. Kinship terms
    • 6. Grammatical Case and Topic Markers
    • 7. Postpositions
• 4
  • Numerals, Deictics, and Pronouns
    • 1. Introduction
    • 3. Classifiers (Counters) and Units of Measurement
    • 4. Deixis
    • 5. Personal Pronouns and Their Equivalents
• 5
  • Verbs
    • 1. Introduction
    • 2. Types of Verbs
    • 3. Causatives
    • 4. Passivization
    • 5. Negation
    • 6. Adverbs
• 6
  • Aspect, Modality, and Tense
    • 1. Introduction
    • 2. Aspect, Modality, and Tense
    • 3. A Note on Evidentiality
    • 4. Phrasal Expressions of Modality
• 7
  • Sentence Enders
    • 1. Introduction
    • 2. Interaction with Tense and Aspect
    • 3. Informal Sentence Enders
    • 4. Formal Sentence Enders
    • 5. The Addressee-Honorific Markers -u and -euu
    • 6. An “All-Purpose” Formality Marker
    • 7. Emphatic Markers
• 8
  • Connectives and Discourse Markers
    • 1. Introduction
    • 2. Adnominal Clauses
    • 3. Reported Speech and Thought
    • 4. Other Connectives
    • 5. Discourse Markers
• 9
  • The Future of Jejueo
• References
• Morpheme Index
• Topic Index
• About the Authors
• Blank Page