Puyuma language

The Puyuma language or Pinuyumayan, 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.

Dialects
The internal classification of Puyuma dialects below is from. 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
 * Apapulu


 * Katipul cluster ('born of a stone')
 * Alipai
 * Pinaski ; 2 km north of Puyuma/Nanwang, and maintains close relations with it
 * Pankiu
 * Kasavakan
 * Katratripul
 * Likavung
 * Tamalakaw
 * Ulivelivek

Phonology
Puyuma has 18 consonants and 4 vowels:

Note that Teng uses for  and  for, unlike in official version. The official orthography is used in this article.

Morphology
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)

Syntax
Puyuma has a verb-initial word order.

Articles include:
 * i – singular personal
 * a – singular non-personal
 * na – plural (personal and non-personal)

Pronouns
The Puyuma personal pronouns are:

Affixes
The Puyuma affixes are:


 * Prefixes
 * ika-: the shape of; forming; shaping
 * ka-: stative marker
 * kara-: collective, to do something together
 * kare-: the number of times
 * ki-: to get something
 * kir-: to go against (voluntarily)
 * kitu-: to become
 * kur-: be exposed to; be together (passively)
 * m-, ma-: actor voice affix/intransitive affix
 * maka-: along; to face against
 * mara-: comparative/superlative marker
 * mar(e)-: reciprocal; plurality of relations
 * mi-: to have; to use
 * mu-: anticausative marker
 * mutu-: to become, to transform into
 * pa-/p-: causative marker
 * pu-: put
 * puka-: ordinal numeral marker
 * piya-: to face a certain direction
 * si-: to pretend to
 * tara-: to use (an instrument), to speak (a language)
 * tinu-: to simulate
 * tua-: to make, to form
 * u-: to go
 * ya-: to belong to; nominalizer


 * Suffixes
 * -a: perfective marker; numeral classifier
 * -an: nominalizer; collective/plural marker
 * -anay: conveyance voice affix/transitive affix
 * -aw: patient voice affix/transitive affix
 * -ay: locative voice affix/transitive affix
 * -i, -u: imperative transitive marker


 * Infixes
 * -in-: perfective marker
 * -em-: actor voice affix/intransitive affix


 * Circumfixes
 * -in-anan: the members of
 * ka- -an: a period of time
 * muri- -an: the way one is doing something; the way something was done
 * sa- -an: people doing things together
 * sa- -enan: people belonging to the same community
 * si- -an: nominalizer
 * Ca- -an, CVCV- -an: collectivity, plurality