Tsou language


Tsou is a divergent Austronesian language spoken by the Tsou people of Taiwan. Tsou is a threatened language; however, this status is uncertain. The speakers are located in the west-central mountains southeast of the Chiayi/Alishan area in Taiwan. The language is written in the Latin script.

Classification

Tsou has traditionally been considered part of a Tsouic branch of Austronesian. However, several recent classifications, such as Chang and Ross dispute the Tsouic branch, with Tsou more divergent than the other two languages, Kanakanabu and Saaroa.

Dialects

The dialectal variation of Tsou is not great. There are four recorded dialects: Tapangu, Tfuea, Duhtu and Iimcu, of which Tapangu and Tfuea are still spoken. Iimcu is not well described. The grammar of the other three dialects is nearly identical, and phonological variation is marginal: In certain environments, Tapangu /i/ corresponds to Tfuea and Duhtu /z/ or /iz/, and Duhtu had /r/ for Tfuea and Tapangu /j/.
The Tsou language is spoken in the following villages. All of the villages are located in Alishan Township 阿里山鄉, Chiayi County 嘉義縣 except for Mamahavana 久美, which is located in Hsinyi/Xinyi Township 信義鄉, Nantou County 南投縣. Both the native Tsou names and Chinese names are given.
Tapangu
Tfuea
Duhtu
Iimucu - extinct

Phonology

The description of Tsou phonology below is from Wright & Ladefoged.

Vowels

Tsou has six vowels,. Vowel sequences occur, including sequences of like vowels, but these are separate moras rather than long vowels or diphthongs. Vowels, especially back vowels, are centralized when flanked by voiceless alveolar consonants. This may involve a central offglide, so that is pronounced as a diphthong or in this environment.

Consonants

The approximants and may surface as non-syllabic mid vowels and, even in initial position, explaining the spelling Tfuea for the name of the dialect. However, stress assignment and restrictions on consonant clusters demonstrate that they behave as consonants.
The plosives are not aspirated. Phonetically aspirated stops are actually sequences of stop plus, as can be seen by the fact that they cannot cluster with a third consonant, and by morphological alternations such as ~ "to trade".
According to spectrum analysis, appears to be a glottal fricative in most environments, but approaches a velar next to the central vowel, as in 'palm, sole'. However, the fact that the sequences and occur, when no other homorganic sequence is allowed, suggests that and may not both be glottal.
The voiceless sibilants, and, are palatalized to and before the front vowels and. However, the voiced sibilant is not affected by this environment.
The implosives and are uncommon. Both may be glottalized in intervocalic position. In addition, alveolar has some unusual allophony: About a third of speakers pronounce it with a lateral release, or before as a lateral approximant, as in "maple". Indeed, Tsuchida transcribed it as a preglottalized lateral,.

Stress

With a few exceptions, stress is not only predictable, but shifts when suffixes are added to a word. It falls on the penultimate vowel, or on the penultimate mora if a moraic analysis is adopted. That is, a final heavy syllable receives stress ; otherwise, stress falls on the penultimate syllable. Additional stress falls in a trochaic pattern: Every other light syllable also receives stress. Unstressed vowels are deleted, except at word boundaries and unless doing so would create a forbidden consonant cluster.
For example, the verb "to cut with a bolo" takes stress on the syllables and, and is realized as. However, this does not explain all consonant clusters, many of which are lexically determined.

Phonotactics

The most complex syllable in Tsou is CCVV. Tsou is unusual in the number of consonant clusters that it allows. Homorganic clusters are not allowed, unless one is a nasal consonant, and a maximum of two consonants may occur together, but otherwise about half of possible sequences are known to occur. For example, all non-homorganic sequences starting with /t/ and /ts/ are found. Missing clusters may not be allowed, or may simply be accidental gaps due to limited knowledge of the lexicon.
In clusters of oral stops, both have an audible release burst. This is true even between vowels, an environment where the first stop has no audible release in most languages, supporting an analysis of these clusters as part of the syllable onset, with no syllable codas occurring in the language.
Stops, oral or nasal, may or may not have a release burst before a nasal stop, depending on the speaker. The initial clusters are unusual cross-linguistically. The spectrum shows that the tongue moves towards an alveolar articulation during the of, demonstrating that it is not articulated as a velar. The initial clusters and are sometimes realized as two released stops, but sometimes with a single release, resembling ejective consonants in other languages.

Grammar

Syntax

Like most other Austronesian languages, Tsou displays a predicate-initial syntax.
Tsou has three main types of questions.
  1. Yes-no questions
  2. Alternative questions
  3. Wh-questions
Tsou has the following types of clauses:
  1. Verbal
  2. #Declarative
  3. #Imperative
  4. # interrogative
  5. Equational
  6. Existential
Important function words are:
Case markers are as follows, with nominative forms placed before slashes and oblique forms placed after them. The nominative form is given when there are no slashes.
Tsou nouns are distinguished from verbs by the presence of case markers and suffixed genitive pronouns, both of which cannot be applied to verbs. Verbs, on the other hand, have elaborate voice marking. Adjectives and certain adverbs actually function as verbs, since they also undergo voice inflection and are placed at the same positions within clauses as verbs.
Tsou is unique for not having any preposition-like elements, instead using nouns or verbs to express these notions.

Verbs

Main verbs can take on three types of voices.
  1. Patient voice: -a
  2. Locative voice: -i
  3. Instrumental/benefactive voice: -eni
Tsou verbs can be divided into five major classes based on morphological alternations. Tsou verbs do not have as many morphological distinctions as other Formosan languages do, since the Tsou language makes more extensive use of auxiliary verbs. For instance, there are no temporal/aspectual distinctions, separate markings for imperatives, and stative/dynamic distinctions. Nevertheless, Tsou still preserves the causative poa-.
Tsou auxiliary verbs can carry temporal/aspectual and modal information as well as voice. They are marked for the following voices:
  1. Actor voice
  2. Undergoer voice
These auxiliary verbs can be divided into three classes:
  1. AV constructions - mio, mo, mi-, moso, mo-
  2. UV constructions - i-, o-
  3. AV/UV constructions - te, ta, tena, nte, ntoso, nto-, la
Tsou has the following aspectual suffixes:
  1. -cu/-c'u - already
  2. -n'a - still, just, about to
  3. -la - once

    Pronouns

The personal pronouns below are from the Tfuya dialect of Tsou, and are sourced from Zeitoun. Note that third-person pronouns are distinguished between those that are visible or non-visible.
Type of
Pronoun		Free
Bound
Bound
1s.a'o-'o/-'u-'o/-'u
2s.suu-su/-ko-su/-ko
3s. taini-ta-taini
3s. ic'o--si
1p. a'ati-to-to
1p. a'ami-mza-mza
2p.muu-mu-mu
3p. hin'i-hin'i-hin'i
3p. hee--he

Numerals

Tfuya Tsou numerals are :
  1. coni ; 10. m-as-kʉ
  2. yuso ; 20. m-pus-ku
  3. tuyu ; 30. m-tuyu-hu
  4. sʉptʉ ; 40. m-sʉptʉ-hʉ
  5. eimo ; 50. m-eimo-hʉ
  6. nomʉ ; 60. m-onmʉ-hʉ
  7. pitu ; 70. m-pʉtvʉ-hʉ
  8. voyu ; 80. m-voyvʉ-hʉ
  9. sio ; 90. m-sio-hʉ
Tens are derived with the circumfix m- -hʉ. There is also a u/ʉ vowel harmony phenomenon.

Language endangerment

These people live in the mountainous areas because dominating colonizers were in Taiwan for over 380 years. Outsiders have killed the indigenous people, burned villages, and forced them to move as the colonizers claimed more and more spaces. Some such colonizers were the Dutch, Spanish, Japanese, and Chinese. The outside rulers imposed their own education systems on the indigenous people, but the most notable influence came from the Kuomintang era, where Taiwanese people were forced to use Mandarin and where children were punished at school if they used their own indigenous language. This forced the original Taiwanese people to give up their language in order to survive in the new, imposed environment.
Due to globalization, people are always in search of finding better lives if they’re not completely happy, and young people are leaving the villages and looking for jobs in big cities. Because of this, children are not using the language and are not getting exposed to the culture as frequently, which means the language is not getting passed down to future generations.
One survey from 1999 found that only 9% of the indigenous children could speak their native language, and most children preferred to use Mandarin, which is the official Taiwan language. Tsou is mostly used by community elders in ceremonies and certain gatherings. Unfortunately, since the parents are not fluent and do not view the language as practical for children, the language is rarely spoken at home. The language is found more in school settings where children attend cultural learning programs.
The Tsou language is recognized by the government. The government has allocated money dedicated to bring language programs to elementary and junior high schools, but the funds are sometimes inconsistent, which negatively affects the programs. It helped that the Martial law was lifted in 1987 and that people could freely speak their native languages again, however, so many other dominant languages were used that several native indigenous languages disappeared.
The elders care about their language and worry that it may not survive in the future, so they welcome any help linguists may provide. In addition, the community has programs to maintain the language. One example is when children get to sing Tsou folk songs in kindergarten and continue to become exposed to other cultural programs through elementary school. People are relying heavily on these kids to keep the language, music, and culture alive. There are programs for elementary and middle school kids to learn the language. Community members are very willing to get involved with events. It is difficult to teach the language because there is a lack of good teaching materials. Schools do not make learning the indigenous language a priority because if an event deemed more important occurs, teachers are likely to put off the language lesson. In addition, students have to worry about studying English, Mandarin, and entrance exam materials, so time is limited and the ethnic language is not a priority in the minds of the younger generation.