Kavalan language
| Kavalan | |
|---|---|
| kbaran, kebalan[kɨβaˈɾan] | |
| Native to | Taiwan |
| Ethnicity | Kavalan |
|
Native speakers
|
24 (2000) |
|
Austronesian
|
|
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | |
| Glottolog | kava1241 |
(dark green, north) The Kavalanic languages: Basai, Ketagalan, and Kavalan
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Kavalan (Kebalan/kbalan) was formerly spoken in the Northeast coast area of Taiwan by the Kavalan people (噶瑪蘭). It is an East Formosan language of the Austronesian family.
Kavalan is no longer spoken in its original area. As of 1930, it was used only as a home language. As of 1987, it was still spoken in Atayal territories. In 2000, this language was still reported to be spoken by 24 speakers but considered moribund.
Kavalan consists of the following speech communities ordered from north to south (Li 2006:1):
These speech communities in eastern Taiwan were named after older settlements from the north, such as Kariawan, Sahut, and Tamayan, where the Kavalan people originally migrated from. Modern-day Kavalan speakers are surrounded by the Amis.
Many Kavalan can also speak Amis, Taiwanese, Mandarin, and Japanese (Li 2006:1).
In Kavalan, Proto-Austronesian phonemes have merged as follows:
The following Proto-Austronesian phonemes are split:
The Kavalan language is also notable for having a large inventory of consonant clusters. It is also one of the only two Formosan languages that has geminate consonants, with the other one being Basay (Blust 2009:642). Consonant gemination is also common in the northern Philippine languages, but is non-existent in the Central Philippine languages except for Rinconada Bikol (Blust 2009:220).
The Kavalan phonemic inventory is as follows (Li 2006:3):
In total, there are 16 consonants and 4 vowels.
Kavalan nouns and verbs are distinguished by the lack of /a/ in the first syllable (nouns) or presence of /a/ (verbs). Kavalan syllables take on the structure (C)(C)V(C)(C) (Li 2006:5). Kavalan is also one of two Formosan languages to have geminating consonants.
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