Partial Reduplication in Some Austronesian Formosan Languages

On the diachronic development of C1V1- reduplication in some Austronesian languages

This paper traces the diachronic developments of C1V1reduplicative processes and their functions in some Austronesian languages. In the first half of the paper, we first examine the possible precursors of this reduplication, in particular the wide range of meanings that are associated with C1V1reduplication in Formosan languages. One of the issues that is addressed is the diachronic relationshi...

Ergativity in Austronesian Languages

Within the Austronesian family, many languages are classified as ergative (e.g., Samoan) or as having some ergative properties (e.g., Tagalog). For one particular language to exhibit some but not all of the characteristics of ergativity is problematic for an ergativity macroparameter. The same issue arises when looking at these languages from an accusative perspective: how do we account for the...

The origin of Mayan languages from Formosan language group of Austronesian

: Basic body-part names (BBPNs) were defined as body-part names in Swadesh basic 200 words. Non-Mayan cognates of Mayan (MY) BBPNs were extensively searched for, by comparing with non-MY vocabulary, including ca.1300 basic words of 82 AN languages listed by Tryon (1985), etc. Thus found cognates (CGs) in non-MY are listed in Table 1, as classified by language groups to which most similar cognat...

The Austronesian languages (review)

Middle Voice in Formosan Languages

This paper is a survey report of the up-to-date understanding of the verbal pre x ma(and other related forms) in Formosan languages. It will be shown that the pre x expresses situation types that commonly cluster around middle voice markers found across languages (Kemmer 1993), but the middle voice category is never recognized among Formosanists. What comes closest is Huang and Sung (2008), who...