Amis language

Amis
Pangcah [pant͡saʜ]
Native to Taiwan
Ethnicity Ami
Native speakers
 180,000  (2009)[1]
Language codes
ISO 639-3 ami
Glottolog amis1246[2]

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(purple) Greater Ami

Amis is the Formosan language of the Amis (or Ami), an indigenous tribal people living along the east coast of Taiwan (see Taiwanese aborigines). It is spoken from Hualien in the north to Taitung in the south, with another population near the southern end of the island, though the northern varieties are sometimes considered a separate language.

Government services in counties where many Amis people live in Taiwan, such as the Hualien and Taitung train stations, broadcast in Amis alongside Mandarin. However, few Amis under the age of 20 in 1995 spoke the language, and it is not known how many of the 138,000 ethnic Amis are speakers.

Dialects

Amis is a dialect cluster. The northern varieties, Sakizaya and Nataoran, are divergent enough to be classified as a separate language or languages. Within Amis proper, there are Tavalong-Vata'an, Middle, and Southern dialects, the latter including Malan and Hengchun Amis.

Phonology

The following discussion covers the central dialect of Amis (Maddieson & Wright).

Consonants

Labial Dental Alveolar Palatal Velar Epiglottal Glottal
Nasals m n̪ ŋ
Plosives and
affricate		 p t̪ t͡s k ʡ ~ я ʔ
Fricatives v ð̪ ~ ɮ̪ s (ɣ) ʜ h
Trill r
Lateral flap ɺ̠
Approximants w j

The voiceless plosives /p t k ʡ/ and the affricate /t͡s/ are released in clusters, so that cecay "one" is pronounced [t͡sᵊt͡saj]; as is /s/: sepat "four" is [sᵊpat⁼]. The glottal stop is an exception, frequently having no audible release in final position. The voiced fricatives, /v ɮ ɣ/ (the latter found only in loanwords) are devoiced to [f ɬ x] in utterance-final and sometimes initial position. /ɮ/ may be interdental or post-dental. The sibilants, /t͡s s/, are optionally palatalized ([t͡ɕ ɕ]) before /i/. /j/ does not occur in word-initial position. /ɺ/ is often post-alveolar, and in final position it is released: [ʡuʡuɺ̠ᵊ] "fog".

/ɮ/ shows dramatic dialectical variation. In Fengbin, a town in the center of Amis territory, it is pronounced as a central dental fricative, [ð̪], whereas in the town of Kangko, only 15 km away, it is a lateral [ɮ̪]. In northern Amis, it is a plosive [d̪], which may be laxed to [ð̪] intervocalically. The epiglottals are also reported to have different pronunciations in the north, but the descriptions are contradictory. In Central Amis, /ʜ/ is always voiceless, and /ʡ/ is often accompanied by vibrations that suggest it involves an epiglottal trill, sometimes transcribed "я". Edmondson and Elsing report that these are true epiglottals initially and medially, but in utterance-final position they are epiglotto–pharyngeal.

Sakizaya, sometimes considered a northern dialect of Amis, contrasts a voiced /z/ with voiceless /s/.

In the practical orthography, /ts/ is written ⟨c⟩, /j/ ⟨y⟩, /ʡ/ ⟨'⟩, /ʔ/ ⟨^⟩, /ɮ/ ⟨d⟩, /ŋ/ ⟨ng⟩, and /ʜ/ ⟨x⟩.

Vowels

Front Central Back
Closed i u
Mid (ə̆)
Open a

Amis has three common vowels, /i a u/. Despite the fact that a great deal of latitude is afforded by only needing to distinguish three vowels, Amis vowels stay close to their cardinal values, though there is more movement of /a/ and /u/ toward each other (tending to the [o] range) than there is in front-vowel space (in the [e] range).

A voiceless epenthetic schwa optionally breaks up consonant clusters, as noted above. However, there are a small number of words where a short schwa (written e) may be phonemic. However, no contrast involving the schwa is known, and if it is also epenthetic, then Amis has words with no vowels at all. Examples of this e are malmes "sad", pronounced [maɺə̆mːə̆s], and ’nem "six", pronounced [ʡnə̆m] or [ʡə̆nə̆m].

Examples of words

  • lotong: monkey/ape
  • fafoy: pig
  • wacu: dog
  • pusi: cat
  • kudiwis: hare
  • cecay: one
  • tosa: two
  • tolo: three
  • sepat: four
  • lima: five
  • enem: six
  • pito: seven
  • falo: eight
  • siwa: nine
  • polo': ten

Grammar

Verbs in the Amis language have some inflections, including existential clause, active voice, passive voice, disposal sentence, imperative mood, optative mood, and prohibitive mood.

There are two word orders in Amis language, called "General" Word Order and "Special" Word Order.

Below are some examples of Amis sentence:

"General" Word Order Sentence I : Verb–subject

Verb Subject
Verb, Adjective, etc. ko (Preposition for Subjects)+Nouns

Example

"General" Word Order Sentence II : Verb–subject–object

Verb Subject Object
Verb, Adjective, etc. ko (Preposition for Subjects)+Nouns to (Preposition for Objects)+Nouns

Example

Notes

  1. ↑ Council of Indigenous Peoples of Executive Yuan, Taiwan
  2. ↑ Nordhoff, Sebastian; Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2013). "Amis". Glottolog. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.
  3. ↑ http://language.psy.auckland.ac.nz/austronesian/language.php?id=800
  4. ↑ http://language.psy.auckland.ac.nz/austronesian/language.php?id=799
  5. ↑ http://language.psy.auckland.ac.nz/austronesian/language.php?id=801

References

External links

Amis language test of Wikipedia at Wikimedia Incubator