| Seediq | |
|---|---|
| Spoken in | Taiwan |
| Region | central, eastern, and coastal |
| Ethnicity | Seediq, Truku |
| Native speakers | 4,750 (date missing) |
| Language family | |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | trv |
Seediq (pronounced [ˈsəːdʑɪq]) is an Atayalic language spoken in the mountains of Northern Taiwan by the Seediq and Truku people. There are 4,750 speakers out of a total of 25,000 ethnic members (Tsukida 2005).
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Seediq consists of three main dialects (Tsukida 2005). Members of each dialect group refer to themselves by the name of their dialect, while the Amis people call them "Taroko."
Seediq syllables have C, CV, or CVC structures, except for some interjections which have CVCC structures (e.g., saws, which is uttered when offering food to ancestors, and sawp, which is the sound of an object blown by the wind). Disyllabic words can take on the following structures:
There are 18-19 consonants and 4 vowels (Tsukida 2005). Vowels in antepenultimate syllables are often /e/. The stressed syllable is usually the penultimate one, and is pronounced with a high pitch.
Affixes include:
Clitics, unlike affixes, do not cause phonological alterations on their roots to which they are attached.
Seediq verbs have three types of voices, which are in turn inflected for mood or aspect (Tsukida 2005:313). Nouns, however, do not inflect for voice.
There are four basic aspect/mood categories:
The future is marked by me-, mpe-, mpe-ke-.
There are a total of five different verb classes (conjugation paradigms). Other verb forms include causatives, reciprocals, and reflexives. Serial verb constructions are also allowed.
Teruku Seediq has 11 word classes (Tsukida 2005:295).
Like many other Formosan and Philippine languages, Seediq nouns and verbs behave similarly. Adjectives can be considered as a subcategory of verbs.
The word order of Seediq is VOS, where S corresponds to the argument marked with absolutive case. This argument ordinarily occurs clause-finally, but may be followed by a topicalized ergative argument. Like many of its other Austronesian relatives, Seediq contains voice morphemes marked on the verb which indicate which of the verb's arguments (agent, patient, etc.) is treated as the subject and thus marked with absolutive case. In noun phrases, modifiers follow the head (Tsukida 2005:304). Unlike Tagalog and many other Philippine languages, there are no linkers connecting the heads and modifiers.
There are three types of Seediq clauses (Tsukida 2005):
Basic clauses have predicates (usually initial and consisting of single verbs, adjectives, or noun phrases), subjects, and optionally non-subject arguments and adjuncts.
Subjects can be recognized via (Tsukida 2005):
Some function words are given below:
Deictics include (Tsukida 2005:303):
There are a total of six prepositions (Tsukida 2005:303):
Stative locatives (e.g., "on the mountain") do not take on any prepositions, but are rather placed directly after the verb without any additional marking.
Preverbal elements such as adverbs, demonstratives, and prepositions can be used to extend predicates. Below is a partial list of predicate extenders from Tsukida (2008:308).
| Type of Pronoun |
Direct | Oblique | Independent possessive |
Subject | Genitive |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1s. | yaku | kenan | (ne-)naku | =ku | =mu |
| 2s. | isu | sunan | (ne-)nisu | =su | =su |
| 3s. | hiya | hiyaan | ne-hiya | - | =na |
| 1p. (incl.) | 'ita | tenan | (ne-)nita | =ta | =ta |
| 1p. (excl.) | yami | menani | (ne-)nami | =nami | =nami |
| 2p. | yamu | munan | (ne-)namu | =namu | =namu |
| 3p. | dehiya | dehiyaan | ne-dehiya | - | =deha |
The cardinal numbers are:
Other numerals and numeral-related affixes (Tsukida 2005:297):
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