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Special Pronominal Forms in Saaroa

Paul Jen-kuei Li

Academia Sinica

Outline

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前言

Saaroa is an Austronesian languages spoken in southern Taiwan.

It is critically endangered, with less than ten fluent speakers left today.

It is the least studied and most poorly understood Formosan language that is still spoken today.

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Taoyuan mountainous district

Kaohsiung

The Saaroa live in Taoyuan mountainous district, Kaohsiung.

前言

1. Saaroa has 13 consonants: /p, t, k, ˈ, c, v, s, m, n, ng, r, l, lh/ and

4 vowels /i, u, e, a/, of which /lh/ is a voiceless lateral and /e/ is a schwa.

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2. Like the other Formosan languages, Saaroa has two productive morphological processes:

affixation and reduplication.

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3. Like most other Formosan languages, Saaroa is predominantly verb-initial and

head-initial language.

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A sketch of Saaroa grammar

前言

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This study is based on my field work and the unpublished texts collected by different linguists in the past six decades: Tung(1962), Tsuchida(1969), Ting(1976), and Li(1999).

Tung

Tsuchida

Ting

Li

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The main purpose of this paper is to discuss the pronominal system of Saaroa.

In addition to the pronominal system listed above, there is an extra set of pronominal forms, =kia and ilhakia that appear in the Saaroa texts.

Table 1. Pronominal system in Saaroa

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Table 2. Pronominal system in Saaroa with an extra set of pronominal forms

I shall discuss their functions and possible origin by checking the language data recorded by different linguists at different periods of time.

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This special set of pronominal forms is peculiar among Formosan languages. Neither C. Li (2010:56) nor Teng and Zeitoun (2016:152) touched on this problem.

If the forms indicate the first person, how do they differ from the other first personal pronouns?

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The form =kia may indicate the first person singular or plural, nominative or genitive, not just plural as stated by Pan (2018:57).

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The full form ilhaku functions as first person nominative (4) or oblique (5).

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Both forms =kia and ilhakia are glossed as the first person singular, as in (6).

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The form isikanamia appears only once and it also functions as predicate in the online dictionary, as in (8):

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According to Tsuchida (1976:39), this set of forms iikia and =kia differs from iiku and =ku ‘1sg.nom’ in that they are contrastive.

Nothing like that has been found in any other Formosan languages except Kanakanavu (geographically close by), in which the similar forms with similar functions iikia and =kia ‘1sg/pl.excl’ are reported by Tsuchida (1976:38).

The forms in Saaroa seem also contrastive as in Kanakanavu.

2. How did the new set of pronouns come about in Saaroa?

1. It is peculiar to have an extra set of pronouns.

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I can confirm the special forms and clarify their functions, as based on the extensive texts collected at different periods of time by Tung, Tsuchida, Ting and myself.

Tung 1962

Tsuchida 1969

Ting 1976

3. Linguistic analysis is best based on extensive texts.

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E-Mail: paulli@gate.sinica.edu.tw

Paul Jen-kuei Li

Academia Sinica