Basay language
| Basay | |
|---|---|
| Native to | Taiwan |
| Ethnicity | Basay, Qauqaut |
| Extinct | mid-20th century |
| Dialects |
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| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | |
| Glottolog | basa1287 |
(dark green, north) The Kavalanic languages: Basai, Ketagalan, and Kavalan
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Basay was a Formosan language spoken around modern-day Taipei in northern Taiwan by the Basay, Qauqaut, and Trobiawan peoples. Trobiawan, Linaw, and Qauqaut were other dialects (see East Formosan languages).
Basay data is mostly available from Erin Asai's 1936 field notes, which were collected from an elderly Basay speaker in Shinshe, Taipei, as well as another one in Yilan who spoken the Trobiawan dialect (Li 1999). However, the Shinshe informant's speech was heavily influenced by Taiwanese, and the Trobiawan informant, named Ipai, had heavy Kavalan influence in her speech.
There are four optional case markers in Basay (Li 1999:646).
Some function words include (Li 1999):
Trobiawan negators include (Li 1999):
Yes-no questions are marked by u ~ nu (Li 1999:657).
Basay verbs, like Kavalan verbs, distinguish between agent-focus (AF) and patient-focus (PF) verbs (Li 1999:650). The perfective prefixes na- and ni- are allomorphs.
The Basay pronouns below are from Li (1999:639).
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