Puyuma language

The Puyuma language or Pinuyumayan (Chinese: 卑南語; pinyin: Bēinányǔ), is the language of the Puyuma, an indigenous people of Taiwan. It is a divergent Formosan language of the Austronesian family. Most speakers are older adults.

Puyuma is one of the more divergent of the Austronesian languages and falls outside reconstructions of Proto-Austronesian.

The internal classification of Puyuma dialects below is from Ting (1978). Nanwang Puyuma is considered to be the relatively phonologically conservative but grammatically innovative, as in it preserves proto-Puyuma voiced plosives but syncretizes the use of both oblique and genitive case.

• Proto-Puyuma
  • Nanwang
  • (Main branch)
    • Pinaski–Ulivelivek
      • Pinaski
      • Ulivelivek
    • Rikavung
    • Kasavakan–Katipul
      • Kasavakan
      • Katipul

Puyuma-speaking villages are:

Puyuma cluster ('born of the bamboo')

• Puyuma (Chinese: Nanwang 南王)
• Apapulu (Chinese: Paosang 寶桑)

Katipul cluster ('born of a stone')

• Alipai (Chinese: Pinlang 賓朗)
• Pinaski (Chinese: Hsia Pinlang 下賓朗); 2 km north of Puyuma/Nanwang, and maintains close relations with it
• Pankiu (Chinese: Pankiu 班鳩)
• Kasavakan (Chinese: Chienhe 建和)
• Katratripul (Chinese: Chihpen 知本)
• Likavung (Chinese: Lichia 利嘉)
• Tamalakaw (Chinese: Taian 泰安)
• Ulivelivek (Chinese: Chulu 初鹿)

Puyuma has 18 consonants and 4 vowels:

Note that Teng uses ⟨lr⟩ for /ɭ/ and ⟨l⟩ for /l/, unlike in official version. The official orthography is used in this article.

Puyuma verbs have four types of focus:

1. Actor focus: Ø (no mark), -em-, -en- (after labials), me-, meʔ-, ma-
2. Object focus: -aw
3. Referent focus: -ay
4. Instrumental focus: -anay

There are three verbal aspects:

1. Perfect
2. Imperfect
3. Future

There are two modes:

1. Imperative
2. Hortative future

Affixes include:

• Perfect: Ø (no mark)
• Imperfect: Reduplication; -a-
• Future: Reduplication, sometimes only -a-
• Hortative future: -a-
• Imperative mode: Ø (no mark)

Puyuma has a verb-initial word order.

Articles include:

• i – singular personal
• a – singular non-personal
• na – plural (personal and non-personal)

The Puyuma personal pronouns are:

The Puyuma affixes are:

• Yuánzhùmínzú yǔyán xiànshàng cídiǎn 原住民族語言線上詞典 (in Chinese) – Puyuma search page at the "Aboriginal language online dictionary" website of the Indigenous Languages Research and Development Foundation
• Puyuma teaching and leaning materials published by the Council of Indigenous Peoples of Taiwan (in Chinese)
• Puyuma translation of President Tsai Ing-wen's 2016 apology to indigenous people – published on the website of the presidential office