Siraya: Retrieving the Phonology, Grammar and Lexicon of a Dormant Formosan Language (Trends in Linguistics. Documentation [TiLDOC] Book 30)

Siraya is a Formosan language once spoken around Tainan City in southwest Taiwan. This comprehensive study is based on an analysis of the language of the Siraya Gospel of St. Matthew, which was translated from the Dutch in 1661. It contains a grammar, lexicon and extensive text with interlinear glossing as well as an introduction with detailed background information. Siraya has many unique linguistic features, which are of great interest to the study of linguistic typology in general. They include various reduplication patterns, orientation prefixes (adding the notions of motion, location or comitation to a verb) and anticipating sequences. The latter are (usually) formal elements of the lexical verb, such as a first consonant or a first syllable, which are prefixed to the auxiliary. Siraya is also of crucial importance for the prehistory of Taiwan because it is one of the first languages to branch off from the Austronesian language family, which has more than 1200 members. The volume is a major contribution to the Siraya people who are keen to rehabilitate Siraya culture heritage and are endeavouring to learn their lost language again. It is a unique achievement in the endeavour to revitalise the traditional languages of Taiwan. Acknowledgements 12 Conventions 13 List of abbreviations 15 Part A: Introduction 17 1. General 17 2. Siraya primary sources and linguistic literature 18 3. Dialect variation 20 4. Some observations about authorship and spelling 22 5. Formosan languages: numbers of speakers and vitality 23 6. The linguistic classification of Formosan languages 24 7. Aboriginal Taiwan and Austronesian prehistory 25 8. The Dutch occupation of West Taiwan: historical setting 26 9. The Siraya people: some historical and ethnographic data 28 10. The Austronesian ethnic groups in the Taiwanese nationalist debate 29 11. A probable cause of the extinction of Siraya 31 12. Attempts at reviving Siraya 31 Part B: A grammatical sketch of Siraya 33 1. A near-phonemic orthography 33 1.1. Symbols in the Siraya 17th century materials that were maintained 33 1.2. Overview of changes made to the 17th century orthography 33 1.3. æ is a palatal ä 34 1.4. Siraya must have had a schwa 35 1.5. e stands for e, ə, a, ä or i 37 1.6. A re-definition of i, j and y according to the syllabic length that they indicate 39 1.6.1. y stands for a short high front vowel ĭ 40 1.6.2. i stands for a long high front vowel i except base-finally after e, where it stands for a palatal semivowel 41 1.6.3. j stands for a palatal semivowel y and (sometimes) for a high front vowel i 41 1.7. ou and o stand for respectively u and o 43 1.8. ou and oe represent the same phoneme u 45 1.9. u 47 1.10. w 48 1.11. k and q refer to one single phoneme k 50 1.12. c preceding i or y is a sibilant or affricate; c preceding o stands for k 50 1.13. ng ̄ 51 1.14. z 52 1.15. g, gh, hg, ch, and (sometimes) h or ø, stand for a velar fricative x 53 1.16. h stands for h, x or 0 55 1.16.1. h is not phonemic in subjunctive markers, in the pronominal suffix -koh, and before voiceless stops 55 1.16.2. Other instances of h represent phonemic h 58 1.17. No geminate consonants 59 1.18. Diacritics 61 1.18.1. Apostrophe indicates the (synchronic) deletion or (diachronic) loss of a phoneme 61 1.18.2. Dieresis indicates palatal ä 63 1.18.3. No circumflex 64 1.18.4. Hyphens occur on morpheme boundaries 65 2. Siraya phonemics 66 2.1. “Phoneme” inventory 66 2.2. Discussion of phonemes and phonemic features 67 2.2.1. The alternation between initial [b] and [v], and between [d] and [r] 68 2.2.2. The alternation between x and h 71 2.2.3. Palatalisation 72 2.2.4. Metathesis 74 2.2.5. Vowel reduction 74 3. Reduplication 76 3.1. (Historical) monosyllabic root reduplication 77 3.1.1. Simple monosyllabic root reduplication 77 3.1.2. Monosyllabic root reduplication with ‹ar› or ‹al› infixation 77 3.1.3. Monosyllabic root reduplication with linking i 78 3.2. Disyllabic root reduplication 78 3.2.1. CVCVC-roots → CVCV-CVCVC 78 3.2.2. (C)VCV-roots → (C)VCV-(C)VCV 79 3.2.3. VCVC-roots → VC-VCVC 80 3.3. Rightward Reduplication 80 3.4. First syllable reduplication 82 3.5. CA-reduplication 82 3.6. Irregular reduplication patterns 83 4. The clause 86 4.1. Clause structure 86 4.1.1. Verbal clauses 87 4.1.1.1. Simple verbal clauses 87 4.1.1.2. Complex verbal clauses 89 4.1.1.3. Existential clauses 90 4.1.2. Nominal clauses 93 4.1.2.1. Equational clauses 93 4.1.2.2. Cleft constructions 94 4.2. Case 94 4.2.1. Case categories 95 4.2.2. The case markers 96 4.3. The linker ka 100 4.4. Prepositions 101 4.5. The personal article ti 105 4.6. Deictics 106 4.7. Personal pronouns 107 4.8. Questions 111 4.9. Possession 114 4.10. Negation 115 5. Verbs 117 5.1. Verb classes 117 5.2. Voice 120 5.2.1. The voice system 120 5.2.2. Unexplained variation between voice suffixes 124 5.2.3. The suffixes -an and -aney highlighting a non-core argument? 125 5.3. Tense, mood and aspect 126 5.3.1. Present tense verbs 126 5.3.2. Past tense verbs 127 5.3.3. Progressive verbs 128 5.3.4. Subjunctive verbs 129 5.3.5. Imperative verbs 131 5.3.6. Some sporadic derivations 132 5.4. Causatives 133 5.5. Inchoative prefixes 135 5.6. The suffixes -ən, -ing or -an denoting a physical affliction 136 5.7. The ‘transformative’ prefix paha- 137 5.8. The inversive prefix aäw- (/ääw-) 137 5.9. Less common affixes 138 5.10. The ‘perfective’ clitic =ato 138 5.11. The additive clitic =ăpa 141 5.12. The adversative clitic =da (/=ra) 142 5.13. Bound verbs 143 5.14. Siraya Orientation prefixes 146 5.15. Complex verb phrases 149 5.16. Anticipating sequences 151 5.17. From anticipating sequences to bound verbs: a historical explanation 155 5.18. Deictic verbs also function as prepositions 157 6. Quantifiers 157 6.1. Numerals 157 6.1.1. Underived numerals 158 6.1.2. Cardinal numbers 159 6.1.3. Ordinal numbers 160 6.1.4. Numerals for counting occurrences 160 6.2. Indefinite quantifiers 161 7. Nouns 162 7.1. Root nouns 162 7.2. Nouns derived from nouns 162 7.3. Nominalisation of verbal bases 165 7.4. Nominalisation of derived verbs 169 7.5. Personal names 171 Part C: Text 172 Chapter 2 173 Chapter 3 184 Chapter 4 192 Chapter 5 203 Chapter 6 224 Chapter 7 239 Chapter 8 251 Chapter 9 265 Chapter 10 281 Chapter 11 299 Part D: Lexicon 312 References 417 Index 424 Main description: Siraya is a Formosan language with unique typological features once spoken around Tainan City in southwest Taiwan. This comprehensive study is based on an analysis of the language of the Siraya Gospel of St. Matthew, which was translated from the Dutch in 1661. It contains a grammar, lexicon and extensive text with interlinear glossing as well as an introduction with detailed background information Volumes in the Trends in Linguistics. Documentation series focus on the presentation of linguistic data. The series addresses the sustained interest in linguistic descriptions, dictionaries, grammars and editions of under-described and hitherto undocumented languages. All world-regions and time periods are represented.