Northern Puluqish (master post)

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There is evidence that Amis and Puyuma subgroup together within Puluqish, forming a northern group opposite Paiwan, MP and KD. Here are innovations uniquely shared, as far as I know, by the two Northern Puluqish languages.

1. Initial of *DuSa ‘2’ aligned on initial of *telux ‘3’ in the serial-counting series. Puyuma retains a contrast between a serial-counting series of numerals and another series for counting objects and people. Amis has lost distinctions among numeral series. Puyuma z reflects the PAN voiced initial *D [ḍ] in the series for objects and people, but has replaced it with the same initial as ‘3’ PAN *telux in the serial counting series. The single series of Amis continues the Proto-northern Puluqish series for objects and people, at least for ‘2’. Table 1:

	Rikavong Puyuma	Tamalakaw Puyuma	Amis
2’ (objects and people)	zowa	zuwa	tosa
‘2’ (serial)	towa	ʈuwa
‘3’	tiɭi	ʈeɽi	tolo

Table 1: Analogical alignment of initial of ‘2’ on ‘3’ in northern Puluqish. Sources for Puyuma: Rikavong: Suenari (1969:152); Tamalakaw: Tsuchida (1980:287). Thao has tusha ‘2’ but contra Sagart (2004), PAN *D [ḍ] evolves regularly to t- (Ross 2015), therefore analogy plays no role there.

2. ‘one’ *sasay: Amis cacay ‘one’, Puyuma sasaya (< *sasa-y-a) ‘one’ (counting things). These forms reflect PAN *sa, short form of PAN *isa/esa ‘one’,  with reduplication, plus intrusive -y- inserted beween final -a in the word-base and the linker -a- following it. Thus Puyuma has ɖaɖua-ya ‘two’,  iwaiwa-ya ‘nine’, but ta-taɭu-a ‘three’, pitu-pitu-a ‘seven’, waɭu-waɭu-a ‘eight’ (all counting things).

3. ten’  *puluq. By the etymology proposed here, a word *puluq  meaning ‘to put aside’ was recruited in counting numbers above 10 in Proto-Puluqish; *puluq ‘(n) [sets of 10] put aside’ could only arise preceded and followed by a numeral.  In numbers 11 to 19,  the numeral for ‘one’ probably had the shape *sa-, as still in the other Puluqish languages: Paiwan tapuluʔ < *sa-puluq and PMP *sa-puluq. Once *puluq ‘put aside’ was lost as an independent morpheme, *puluq could be reanalyzed as a morpheme meaning ‘ten’ and *sa- could be dispensed with. That reduction had taken place in the ancestor of Amis and Puyuma, but not elsewhere in Puluqish.

4. ‘ten’ *mukeCep. In both languages, inherited *puluq is attested only as the serial-counting word for ‘ten’ and multiples of ten. When counting human and non-human referents, it has given way to an innovated form *mukeCep: Amis moketep, Puyuma mukʈəp. The expression of numerals 11 to 19 is complex and will not be discussed here.

5. ‘bone’ *ukak:  Amis ‘okak ‘bone’, Puyuma ukak ‘bone’;

6. ‘cloud’ *kuCem: Amis kotem ‘black cloud’, Puyuma kuʈəm ‘(big black) cloud’ (mi-a-kuʈəm ‘big black clouds promising rain’);

7. ‘activity, skill’ *Nemak: Amis dmak ‘an activity, a happening; the things one does; to move’ (Fey); ‘activity, affair, business; to move; situation’ (Namoh); Puyuma lemak ‘know-how; skill’.

8. ‘hat’ *kabuŋ: Amis kafoŋ ‘hat; anything worn on the head’ (Fey); Puyuma kabuŋ ‘hat’, mi-kabuŋ ‘wear a hat’ (Cauquelin). This is a cultural item. Its phylogenetic value is low.

Northern Puluqish clashes with Blust’s East Formosan subgroup. For a critique of East Formosan, see  Sagart (2015).

References

Blust, R. (1999) Subgrouping, circularity and extinction: some issues in Austronesian comparative linguistics. In: Elizabeth Zeitoun and Paul Jen-kuei Li (eds.) Selected Papers from the Eighth International Conference on Austronesian linguistics, 31-94. Taipei: Institute of Linguistics (preparatory office).

Ross, Malcolm (2015) Some Proto Austronesian coronals reexamined, in Elizabeth Zeitoun, Stacy F. Teng & Joy J. Wu (ed.), New Advances in Formosan Linguistics, Asia-Pacific Linguistics, Canberra, Australia, pp. 1-38.

Sagart, L. (2004) The higher phylogeny of Austronesian and the position of Tai-Kadai. Oceanic Linguistics 43,2: 411-444.

Sagart, L. (2008) The expansion of setaria farmers in East Asia: a linguistic and archaeological model. In Sanchez-Mazas A, Blench R, Ross M, Peiros I, Lin M, eds. Past human migrations in East Asia: matching archaeology, linguistics and genetics, 133-157. Routledge Studies in the Early History of Asia, London: Routledge.

Sagart, L. (2015) ‘East Formosan’ and the PAN palatals. Paper presented at the 13th International Conference on Austronesian Linguistics, Taipei, July 18-22, 2015.

Suenari, Michiko (1969) A preliminary report on Puyuma language (Rikavong dialect). Bulletin of the Institute of Ethnology, Academia Sinica, 27:141-163.

Tsuchida, Shigeru (1980) Puyuma (Tamalakaw dialect) vocabulary with grammatical notes and texts. in Kuroshio no Minzoku, Bunka, Gengo pp.183-307. Tokyo: Institute for the study of languages and cultures of Asia and Africa, Tokyo University of foreign studies.

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