Basay was a

Formosan language The Formosan languages are a geographic grouping comprising the languages of the indigenous peoples of Taiwan, all of which are Austronesian. They do not form a single subfamily of Austronesian but rather nine separate subfamilies. The Taiwa ...

spoken around modern-day

Taipei Taipei (), officially Taipei City, is the capital and a special municipality of the Republic of China (Taiwan). Located in Northern Taiwan, Taipei City is an enclave of the municipality of New Taipei City that sits about southwest of the n ...

in northern

Taiwan Taiwan, officially the Republic of China (ROC), is a country in East Asia, at the junction of the East and South China Seas in the northwestern Pacific Ocean, with the People's Republic of China (PRC) to the northwest, Japan to the nort ...

by the Basay,

Qauqaut The Qauqaut () were a Taiwanese aboriginal people who lived primarily in the town of Su-ao in Yilan County. They spoke the Basay language, which is a Kavalanic language. According to Japanese anthropologist Inō Kanori, the Qauqaut people ha ...

, and Trobiawan peoples. Trobiawan, Linaw, and Qauqaut were other dialects (''see

East Formosan languages The East Formosan languages consist of various Formosan languages scattered across Taiwan, including Kavalan, Amis, and the extinct Siraya language. This grouping is supported by both Robert Blust and Paul Jen-kuei Li. Li considers the Siraya-s ...

''). Basay data is mostly available from Erin Asai's 1936 field notes, which were collected from an elderly Basay speaker in Shinshe,

, as well as another one in

Yilan Yilan may refer to: China *Yilan County, Heilongjiang (依兰县), county of central Heilongjiang province, People's Republic of China *Yilan Town, Heilongjiang (依兰镇), seat of Yilan County * Yilan, Jilin (依兰镇), town in Yanji Taiwan *Y ...

who spoken the Trobiawan dialect (Li 1999). However, the Shinshe informant's speech was heavily influenced by Taiwanese, and the Trobiawan informant, named Ipai, had heavy Kavalan influence in her speech. Li (1992) mentions four Basaic languages: Basay, Luilang, Nankan, Puting. Nankan and Puting are close to Kavalan, whereas Luilang is divergent.Tsuchida, Shigeru. 1985. Kulon: Yet another Austronesian language in Taiwan?. Bulletin of the Institute of Ethnology, Academia Sinica 60. 1-59.

Syntax

There are four optional case markers in Basay (Li 1999:646). *a – nominative, ligature (Shinshe dialect) *ta – nominative (Trobiawan dialect) *li – locative (Shinshe dialect) *u – oblique (Trobiawan dialect) Some function words include (Li 1999): *pai 'future' Trobiawan negators include (Li 1999): *mia 'not' (Shinshe dialect: mayu 'not (yet)') *asi 'don't' (Shinshe dialect: manai 'don't') *(m)upa 'not to want' *(Shinshe dialect: kualau 'not exist') Yes-no questions are marked by ''u ~ nu'' (Li 1999:657).

Morphology

Basay verbs, like Kavalan verbs, distinguish between agent-focus (AF) and patient-focus (PF) verbs (Li 1999:650). The perfective prefixes na- and ni- are

allomorph In linguistics, an allomorph is a variant phonetic form of a morpheme, or, a unit of meaning that varies in sound and spelling without changing the meaning. The term ''allomorph'' describes the realization of phonological variations for a specif ...

Pronouns

The Basay pronouns below are from Li (1999:639).

References

Notes

General references

* *

External links

ABVD: Basai/Laurent SagartABVD: Basay/Paul Jen-kuei Li (李壬癸)
Extinct languages of Asia Languages of Taiwan Formosan languages Languages extinct in the 20th century {{Formosan-lang-stub