Harman Patil (Editor)

Thao language

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Native to
  
Taiwan

Native speakers
  
5–6 (2000)

ISO 639-3
  
ssf

Ethnicity
  
300 Thao (2007)

Dialects
  
Brawbaw Shtafari

Language family
  
Austronesian Northern Formosan Thao

Thao (Thao: Thaw a lalawa), pronunciation [θau], also known as Sao, is the language of the Thao people, a tribe of Taiwanese aborigines in the region of Sun Moon Lake in central Taiwan. In 2000, there were 5 or 6 speakers living in Ita Thaw (伊達邵) village (traditionally called Barawbaw), all but one of whom were over the age of sixty. Two elderly native speakers died December 2014 including chief Tarma (袁明智), age 75.

Contents

Thao is a Formosan language of the Austronesian family; Barawbaw and Shtafari are dialects.

Consonants

Orthographic notes:

  • /θ ð ʃ/ are written /ɬ/ is written <lh>/ŋ/ is written <ng>/ʔ/ is written <'>

    Notes:

  • The glides /j w/ are derived from the underlying vowels /i u/ to meet the requirements that syllables must have onset consonants and to indicate stress placement accurately.
  • [v] is an allophone of /w/ occurring intervocalically.

    • Vowels

    Vowel inventory

    Notes:

  • Stress is penultimate, otherwise can be written /á í ú/ as in "dadú", but doubling /aa ii uu/ is also frequently used, as in "daduu".
  • [e] and [o] occur as allophones of /i/ and /u/, respectively, when preceded or followed either by /q/ or /r/.

    • Morphology

    Thao has two or arguably three patterns of reduplication: Ca-reduplication, full reduplication, and rightward reduplication (which is sometimes considered to be a form of full reduplication).

    Thao verbs have the following types of focus (Blust 2003:239).

    1. Actor: -um- (present), ma- (future)
    2. Patient: -in, -in-
    3. Locative: -an

    Syntax

    Thao word order can be both SVO and VSO, although the former is derived from Taiwanese (Blust 2003:228).

    The Thao personal marker is "ti" (Blust 2003:228). Negatives include "ani" and "antu"; "ata tu" is used in "don't" constructions. The perfect is marked by "iza", the past by an infix just after the primary onset consonant "-in-" and the future by the prefix "a-". Imperatives are marked by "-í" and softer imperatives or requests roughly translated as "please" by "-uan" sometimes spelled "-wan" which can co-occur with "-í".

    Pronouns

    The Thao personal pronouns below are from Blust (2003:207). Note that there is only 1 form each for "we (exclusive)," "you (plural)" and "they."

    Other pronouns include:

    Affixes

    The following affixes are sourced from Blust (2003:92-188) and adjusted to the modern spelling.

    Notes

    References

    External links

  • Robert Blust's audio recordings of Thao are archived with Kaipuleohone

    • Morphology

    Thao has two or arguably three patterns of reduplication: Ca-reduplication, full reduplication, and rightward reduplication (which is sometimes considered to be a form of full reduplication).

    Thao verbs have the following types of focus (Blust 2003:239).

    1. Actor: -um- (present), ma- (future)
    2. Patient: -in, -in-
    3. Locative: -an

    Syntax

    Thao word order can be both SVO and VSO, although the former is derived from Taiwanese (Blust 2003:228).

    The Thao personal marker is "ti" (Blust 2003:228). Negatives include "ani" and "antu"; "ata tu" is used in "don't" constructions. The perfect is marked by "iza", the past by an infix just after the primary onset consonant "-in-" and the future by the prefix "a-". Imperatives are marked by "-í" and softer imperatives or requests roughly translated as "please" by "-uan" sometimes spelled "-wan" which can co-occur with "-í".

    Pronouns

    The Thao personal pronouns below are from Blust (2003:207). Note that there is only 1 form each for "we (exclusive)," "you (plural)" and "they."

    Other pronouns include:

    Affixes

    The following affixes are sourced from Blust (2003:92-188) and adjusted to the modern spelling.

    References

    Thao language Wikipedia
    (Text) CC BY-SA


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