Paiwan language
| Paiwan | |
|---|---|
| Native to | Taiwan |
| Ethnicity | Paiwan |
|
Native speakers
|
66,000 (2002) |
|
Austronesian
|
|
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | |
| Glottolog | paiw1248 |
(dark green, south) Paiwan
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Paiwan is a native language of Taiwan, spoken by the Paiwan people, one tribe of the Taiwanese aborigines. Paiwan is a Formosan language of the Austronesian language family. The number of speakers is estimated to be 66,000.
Paiwan variants can be divided into the following dialect zones (Ferrell 1982:4–6).
Kuɬaɬau Paiwan has 23–24 consonants (/h/ is found only in loanwords, and /ʔ/ is uncommon) and 4 vowels (Ferrell 1982:7). Unlike many other Formosan languages that have merged many Proto-Austronesian phonemes, Paiwan preserves most Proto-Austronesian phonemes and is thus highly important for reconstruction purposes.
The four Paiwan vowels are /i ə a u/. /ə/ is written e in the literature.
In Northern Paiwan the palatal consonants have been lost, though this is recent and a few conservative speakers maintain them as allophonic variants (not as distinct phonemes). /ʔ/ is robust, unlike in other Paiwan dialects where its status is uncertain, as it derives from *q.
Younger speakers tend to pronounce /ʎ/ as [l]. Fricative [ɣ] is characteristic of Mudan village; elsewhere is Southern Paiwan it tends to be a trill [r], though it still varies [r ~ ɣ ~ ʁ ~ h]. Word-initial *k has become /ʔ/.
The Paiwan personal pronouns below are from Ferrell (1982:14).
Paiwan has 3 construction markers, which are also known as relational particles (Ferrell 1982:13).
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