内容简介

Although official government statistics list only eleven aboriginal languages in Taiwan (and until recently only nine), fifteen languages are still actively used, or at least remembered by a few elderly persons: 1. Atayal, 2. Sediq, 3. Kavalan, 4. Amis, 5. Puyuma, 6. Paiwan, 7. Tsou, 8. Kanakanabu, 9. Saaroa, 10. Rukai, 11. Bunun, 12. Thao, 13. Pazeh, 14. Saisiyat, and 15. Yami...(展开全部) Although official government statistics list only eleven aboriginal languages in Taiwan (and until recently only nine), fifteen languages are still actively used, or at least remembered by a few elderly persons: 1. Atayal, 2. Sediq, 3. Kavalan, 4. Amis, 5. Puyuma, 6. Paiwan, 7. Tsou, 8. Kanakanabu, 9. Saaroa, 10. Rukai, 11. Bunun, 12. Thao, 13. Pazeh, 14. Saisiyat, and 15. Yami (the latter spoken on Lan Yu, or Botel Tobago island). Rumors occasionally surface that languages long thought to be extinct, as Taokas, or Basay, are still spoken by a few isolated individuals thoroughly disguised within the majority Taiwanese-speaking population. To date, however, all such putative survivors of language extinction have turned out to be individuals who remember no more than a few dozen words and can in no sense be said to be speakers of the language. After Pazeh, which appears to be down to its last full speaker (Blust 1999b, Li & Tsuchida 2001), Thao is the most seriously endangered of the aboriginal languages of Taiwan. Moreover, it has no close genetic relationship to any other extant language, possibly forming an independent branch of the far-ung Austronesian language family (Blust 1996a). Its potential importance to reconstruction is thus far greater than would be true for a single language chosen at random. The Thao language is spoken today by about fifteen persons out of a considerably larger population which claims Thao ancestry. Most of the Thao who still maintain their language reside in Te-hua village (Thao: Barawbaw), a mixed Taiwanese-Thao community o