The Tsouic languages (also known as the Central Formosan languages) are three
Formosan languages
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 ...
,
Tsou proper and the Southern languages
Kanakanavu and
Saaroa. The Southern Tsouic languages of Kanakanavu and Saaroa have the smallest phonemic inventories out of all the Formosan languages, with each language having only 13 consonants and 4 vowels (Blust 2009:165).
[Blust, Robert A. ''The Austronesian Languages''. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics, Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, Australian National University, 2009. , .] These two languages are highly endangered, as many Southern Tsouic speakers are shifting to
Bunun and
Mandarin Chinese
Mandarin (; ) is a group of Chinese (Sinitic) dialects that are natively spoken across most of northern and southwestern China. The group includes the Beijing dialect, the basis of the phonology of Standard Chinese, the official language of ...
.
The Proto-Tsouic language was reconstructed by Japanese linguist Shigeru Tsuchida in 1976, and is supported by Blust (1999), Li (2008), and Sagart (2014). However, Chang (2006)
[Chang, Henry Yungli. 2006. "Rethinking the Tsouic Subgroup Hypothesis: A Morphosyntactic Perspective." In Chang, H., Huang, L. M., Ho, D. (eds.). ''Streams converging into an ocean: Festschrift in honor of Professor Paul Jen-Kuei Li on his 70th birthday.'' Taipei: Institute of Linguistics, Academia Sinica.] and Ross (2009)
[Ross, Malcolm. 2009. "Proto Austronesian verbal morphology: A reappraisal." In Alexander Adelaar and Andrew Pawley (eds.). ''Austronesian historical linguistics and culture history: a festschrift for Robert Blust''. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics.] deny that Tsouic is a valid group; Ross places Southern Tsouic within ''Nuclear Austronesian'' (the family of the various proto-Austronesian reconstructions), but the
Tsou language
Tsou () is a divergent Austronesian language spoken by the Tsou people of Taiwan. Tsou is a threatened language; however, this status is uncertain. Its speakers are located in the west-central mountains southeast of the Chiayi/ Alishan area in ...
as a more divergent branch.
Sagart (2014) supports Tsouic on the basis on shared irregular phonological reflexes confined to specific terms, in addition to over 57 terms reconstructed by Tsuchida that appear in no other Austronesian clade.
Classification
*''
Tsou''
*Southern Tsouic
**''
Kanakanavu''
**''
Saaroa''
Sound changes
The following sound changes from
Proto-Austronesian
Proto-Austronesian (commonly abbreviated as PAN or PAn) is a proto-language. It is the reconstructed ancestor of the Austronesian languages, one of the world's major language families. Proto-Austronesian is assumed to have begun to diversify 3 ...
occurred in the Tsouic languages (Li 2008:215).
[Li, Paul Jen-kuei. 2008. "Time perspective of Formosan Aborigines." In Sanchez-Mazas, Alicia ed. ''Past human migrations in East Asia: matching archaeology, linguistics and genetics''. Taylor & Francis US.]
* *C, *d > c
* *y > Proto-Tsouic *z
* *R > r
References
Further reading
* Tsuchida, S. (1976). ''Reconstruction of Proto-Tsouic phonology''. [Tokyo: Institute for the Study of Languages and Cultures of Asia and Africa, Tokyo Gaikokugo Daigaku.
* Chang, Henry Yungli (2006). "Rethinking the Tsouic Subgroup Hypothesis: A Morphosyntactic Perspective." In Chang, H., Huang, L. M., Ho, D. (eds.). ''Streams converging into an ocean: Festschrift in honor of Professor Paul Jen-Kuei Li on his 70th birthday.'' Taipei: Institute of Linguistics, Academia Sinica.
{{Austronesian languages
Formosan languages
Languages of Taiwan