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Puyuma language

The Puyuma language or Pinuyumayan (), is the language of the Puyuma, an indigenous people of Taiwan. It is a language of the Austronesian family. Most speakers are older adults.

Puyuma is one of the more divergent of the Austronesian languages and falls outside reconstructions of Proto-Austronesian.

Dialects

The internal classification of Puyuma dialects below is from . Nanwang Puyuma is considered to be the relatively phonologically conservative but grammatically innovative, as in it preserves proto-Puyuma voiced plosives but syncretizes the use of both oblique and genitive case.

  • Proto-Puyuma
  • Nanwang
  • (Main branch)
  • Pinaski–Ulivelivek
  • Pinaski
  • Ulivelivek
  • Rikavung
  • Kasavakan–Katipul
  • Kasavakan
  • Katipul

Puyuma-speaking villages are:

Puyuma cluster ('born of the bamboo')
  • Puyuma ()
  • Apapulu ()
Katipul cluster ('born of a stone')
  • Alipai ()
  • Pinaski (); 2 km north of Puyuma/Nanwang, and maintains close relations with it
  • Pankiu ()
  • Kasavakan ()
  • Katratripul ()
  • Likavung ()
  • Tamalakaw ()
  • Ulivelivek ()

Phonology

Puyuma has 18 consonants and 4 vowels:

Note that Teng uses for and for , swapping their values in the official orthography. The official orthography is used in this article.

Grammar

Morphology

Puyuma verbs have four types of focus:

  1. Actor focus: Ø (no mark), -em-, -en- (after labials), me-, meʔ-, ma-
  2. Object focus: -aw
  3. Referent focus: -ay
  4. Instrumental focus: -anay

There are three verbal aspects:

  1. Perfect
  2. Imperfect
  3. Future

There are two modes:

  1. Imperative
  2. Hortative future

Affixes include:

  • Perfect: Ø (no mark)
  • Imperfect: Reduplication; -a-
  • Future: Reduplication, sometimes only -a-
  • Hortative future: -a-
  • Imperative mode: Ø (no mark)

Syntax

Puyuma has a verb-initial word order.

Articles include:

  • i – singular personal
  • a – singular non-personal
  • na – plural (personal and non-personal)

Pronouns

The Puyuma personal pronouns are:

Affixes

The Puyuma affixes are:

Prefixes
  • ika-: the shape of; forming; shaping
  • ka-: stative marker
  • kara-: collective, to do something together
  • kare-: the number of times
  • ki-: to get something
  • kir-: to go against (voluntarily)
  • kitu-: to become
  • kur-: be exposed to; be together (passively)
  • m-, ma-: actor voice affix/intransitive affix
  • maka-: along; to face against
  • mara-: comparative/superlative marker
  • mar(e)-: reciprocal; plurality of relations
  • mi-: to have; to use
  • mu-: anticausative marker
  • mutu-: to become, to transform into
  • pa-/p-: causative marker
  • pu-: put
  • puka-: ordinal numeral marker
  • piya-: to face a certain direction
  • si-: to pretend to
  • tara-: to use (an instrument), to speak (a language)
  • tinu-: to simulate
  • tua-: to make, to form
  • u-: to go
  • ya-: to belong to; nominalizer
Suffixes
  • -a: perfective marker; numeral classifier
  • -an: nominalizer; collective/plural marker
  • -anay: conveyance voice affix/transitive affix
  • -aw: patient voice affix/transitive affix
  • -ay: locative voice affix/transitive affix
  • -i, -u: imperative transitive marker
Infixes
  • -in-: perfective marker
  • -em-: actor voice affix/intransitive affix
Circumfixes
  • -in-anan: the members of
  • ka- -an: a period of time
  • muri- -an: the way one is doing something; the way something was done
  • sa- -an: people doing things together
  • sa- -enan: people belonging to the same community
  • si- -an: nominalizer
  • Ca- -an, CVCV- -an: collectivity, plurality

Notes

References

External links