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Robert Blust
Robert A. Blust (; zh, c=白樂思, p=Bái Lèsī; May 9, 1940 – January 5, 2022) was an American linguist who worked in several areas, including historical linguistics, lexicography and ethnology. He was Professor of Linguistics at the University of Hawaii at Mānoa. Blust specialized in the Austronesian languages and made major contributions to the field of Austronesian linguistics. Early life and career Blust was born in Cincinnati, Ohio on May 9, 1940, and raised in California. He received both a Bachelor of Arts in anthropology in 1967 and a PhD in linguistics in 1974 from the University of Hawaii at Mānoa. He taught at Leiden University in the Netherlands from 1976 to 1984, after which he returned to the Department of Linguistics at Mānoa for the rest of his career, serving as department chair from 2005 to 2008. He was a Fellow of the Linguistic Society of America. Austronesian languages Until 2018, he served as the review editor for '' Oceanic Linguistics'', an ac ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cincinnati, Ohio
Cincinnati ( ; colloquially nicknamed Cincy) is a city in Hamilton County, Ohio, United States, and its county seat. Settled in 1788, the city is located on the northern side of the confluence of the Licking River (Kentucky), Licking and Ohio River, Ohio rivers, the latter of which marks the state line with Kentucky. It is the List of cities in Ohio, third-most populous city in Ohio and List of united states cities by population, 66th-most populous in the U.S., with a population of 309,317 at the 2020 census. The city is the economic and cultural hub of the Cincinnati metropolitan area, Ohio's most populous metro area and the Metropolitan statistical area, nation's 30th-largest, with over 2.3 million residents. Throughout much of the 19th century, Cincinnati was among the Largest cities in the United States by population by decade, top 10 U.S. cities by population. The city developed as a port, river town for cargo shipping by steamboats, located at the crossroads of the Nor ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Thao Language
Thao (; endonym: Thau a lalawa), also known as Sao, is the nearly extinct language of the Thao people, an indigenous people of Taiwan from the Sun Moon Lake region in central Taiwan. It is a Formosan language of the Austronesian family; Barawbaw and Shtafari are dialects. Name The name ''Thao'' literally means "person", from Proto-Austronesian ''*Cau''. It is therefore cognate with the name of the Tsou. History Speaking Thao was criminalised under Japanese rule of Taiwan and later the Kuomintang regime, contributing to its critically endangered status today. A Thao-English dictionary by Robert A. Blust was published in 2003 by Academia Sinica's Institute of Linguistics. In 2014, there were four L1 speakers and a fluent L2 speaker living in Ita Thaw (伊達邵) village (traditionally called Barawbaw), all but one of whom were over the age of sixty. Two elderly native speakers died in December of that year, including chief Tarma (袁明智), age 75. Four elderly L1 sp ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Paiwan Language
Paiwan (, ) is a native language of southern Taiwan. It is spoken as a first language by the ethnic Paiwan, a Taiwanese indigenous people, and historically as a second language by most of people in southern Taiwan. Paiwan is a Formosan language of the Austronesian language family. It is also one of the national languages of Taiwan. Dialects Paiwan variants are seen divided into the following dialect zones by Ferrell. *A1 – southern and central **Kuɬaɬau (Kulalao) _ used in Ferrell's 1982 ''Paiwan Dictionary'' due to its widespread intelligibility and preservation of various phonemic distinctions; also spoken in Tjuabar Village, Taitung County, where Tjariḍik and "Tjuabar" (closely related to Tjavuaɬi) are also spoken. **Kapaiwanan (Su-Paiwan) **Tjuaqatsiɬay (Kachirai) – southernmost dialect *A2 – central **Ɬarəkrək (Riki-riki) **Patjavaɬ (Ta-niao-wan) *B1 – northernmost **Tjukuvuɬ (Tokubun) **Kaviangan (Kapiyan) *B2 – northwestern **Tjaɬakavus (Chalaab ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Amis Language
Amis ( or ) is a Formosan language of the Amis (or Ami), an indigenous people living along the east coast of Taiwan. Currently, the largest of the Formosan languages, it is spoken from Hualien in the north to Taitung in the south, with another population in the Hengchun Peninsula near the southern end of the island, though the northern varieties are considered to be separate languages. Government services in counties where many Amis people live in Taiwan, such as the Hualien and Taitung railway stations, broadcast in Amis alongside Mandarin. However, few Amis under the age of 20 in 1995 spoke the language. It is not known how many of the 200,000 ethnic Amis speak the language, but overall a third of the aboriginal Taiwanese population does. Dialects Amis is a dialect cluster. There are five dialects: Southern Amis, Tavalong-Vataan, Central Amis, Chengkung-Kwangshan, and Northern Amis (Nanshi Amis, which includes Nataoran). Sakizaya is a moribund language spoken among the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pazeh Language
Pazeh (also spelled Pazih, Pazéh) and Kaxabu are dialects of a language of the Pazeh and Kaxabu, neighboring Taiwanese indigenous peoples. The language is Formosan, of the Austronesian language family. The last remaining native speaker of the Pazeh dialect died in 2010, but 12 speakers of Kaxabu remain. Classification Pazeh and Kaxabu are classified as a Formosan language of the Austronesian language family. Sound changes The Pazih language merged the following Proto-Austronesian phonemes (Li 2001:7). #*C, *S > s #*D, *Z > d #*k, *g > k #*j, *s > z #*S2, *H > h #*N, *ñ > l #*r, *R > x Pazih also split some Proto-Austronesian phonemes: #*S > s (merged with *C); *S2, *H > h #*w > ø, w #*e > e, u History Due to prejudice faced by the Pazeh, as well as other indigenous groups of Taiwan, Hoklo Taiwanese came to displace Pazeh. The last remaining native speaker of the Pazeh dialect, Pan Jin-yu, died in 2010 at the age of 96. Before her death, she offered Pazeh c ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kavalan Language
Kavalan (also known as Kvalan, Kebalan or Kbalan) was formerly spoken in the Northeast coast area of Taiwan by the Kavalan people (噶瑪蘭). It is an East Formosan language of the Austronesian family. Kavalan is no longer spoken in its original area. As of 1930, it was used only as a home language. As of 1987, it was still spoken in Atayal territories. In 2000, this language was still reported to be spoken by 24 speakers but considered moribund. In 2017, a study using the EDGE metric from species conservation found that Kavalan, although critically endangered, was among the most lexically distinct of Austronesian languages. Dialects Kavalan consists of the following speech communities ordered from north to south: *Kariawan (Jialiwan 加禮宛) – near Hualien, a formerly Sakizaya-speaking area *Patʀungan (Xinshe 新社) – located in Fungpin (豐濱鄉), Hualien *Kulis (Lide 立德) *Kralut (Zhangyuan 樟原) These speech communities in eastern Taiwan were name ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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 up to nine separate primary subfamilies. The Taiwanese indigenous peoples recognized by the government are about 2.3% of the island's population. However, only 35% speak their ancestral language, due to centuries of language shift. Of the approximately 26 languages of the Taiwanese indigenous peoples, at least ten are extinct, another four (perhaps five) are moribund, and all others are to some degree endangered. They are national languages of Taiwan. The aboriginal languages of Taiwan have great significance in historical linguistics since, in all likelihood, Taiwan is the place of origin of the entire Austronesian language family. According to American linguist Robert Blust, the Formosan languages form nine of the ten principal branches of the family, while the one re ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Taiwan
Taiwan, officially the Republic of China (ROC), is a country in East Asia. The main geography of Taiwan, island of Taiwan, also known as ''Formosa'', lies between the East China Sea, East and South China Seas in the northwestern Pacific Ocean, with the China, People's Republic of China (PRC) to the northwest, Japan to the northeast, and the Philippines to the south. It has an area of , with mountain ranges dominating the eastern two-thirds and plains in the western third, where its Urbanization by country, highly urbanized population is concentrated. The combined Free area of the Republic of China, territories under ROC control consist of list of islands of Taiwan, 168 islands in total covering . The Taipei–Keelung metropolitan area, largest metropolitan area is formed by Taipei (the capital), New Taipei City, and Keelung. With around 23.9 million inhabitants, Taiwan is among the List of countries and dependencies by population density, most densely populated countries. Tai ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Papua New Guinea
Papua New Guinea, officially the Independent State of Papua New Guinea, is an island country in Oceania that comprises the eastern half of the island of New Guinea and offshore islands in Melanesia, a region of the southwestern Pacific Ocean north of Australia. It has Indonesia–Papua New Guinea border, a land border with Indonesia to the west and neighbours Australia to the south and the Solomon Islands to the east. Its capital, on its southern coast, is Port Moresby. The country is the world's third largest list of island countries, island country, with an area of . The nation was split in the 1880s between German New Guinea in the North and the Territory of Papua, British Territory of Papua in the South, the latter of which was ceded to Australia in 1902. All of present-day Papua New Guinea came under Australian control following World War I, with the legally distinct Territory of New Guinea being established out of the former German colony as a League of Nations mandate. T ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sarawak
Sarawak ( , ) is a States and federal territories of Malaysia, state of Malaysia. It is the largest among the 13 states, with an area almost equal to that of Peninsular Malaysia. Sarawak is located in East Malaysia in northwest Borneo, and is bordered by the Malaysian state of Sabah to the northeast, Kalimantan (the Indonesian portion of Borneo) to the south, and Brunei in the north. The state capital, Kuching, is the largest city in Sarawak, the economic centre of the state, and the seat of the Sarawak state government. Other cities and towns in Sarawak include Miri, Malaysia, Miri, Sibu, and Bintulu. As of 2020 Malaysia census, the population of Sarawak was 2.453 million. Sarawak has an equatorial climate with tropical rainforests and abundant animal and plant species. It has several prominent cave systems at Gunung Mulu National Park. Rajang River is the longest river in Malaysia; Bakun Dam, one of the largest dams in Southeast Asia, is located on one of its tributaries, the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Classification
Classification is the activity of assigning objects to some pre-existing classes or categories. This is distinct from the task of establishing the classes themselves (for example through cluster analysis). Examples include diagnostic tests, identifying spam emails and deciding whether to give someone a driving license. As well as 'category', synonyms or near-synonyms for 'class' include 'type', 'species', 'order', 'concept', 'taxon', 'group', 'identification' and 'division'. The meaning of the word 'classification' (and its synonyms) may take on one of several related meanings. It may encompass both classification and the creation of classes, as for example in 'the task of categorizing pages in Wikipedia'; this overall activity is listed under taxonomy. It may refer exclusively to the underlying scheme of classes (which otherwise may be called a taxonomy). Or it may refer to the label given to an object by the classifier. Classification is a part of many different kinds of activ ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sound Change
In historical linguistics, a sound change is a change in the pronunciation of a language. A sound change can involve the replacement of one speech sound (or, more generally, one phonetic feature value) by a different one (called phonetic change) or a more general change to the speech sounds that exist (''phonological change''), such as the merger of two sounds or the creation of a new sound. A sound change can eliminate the affected sound, or a new sound can be added. Sound changes can be environmentally conditioned if the change occurs in only some sound environments, and not others. The term "sound change" refers to diachronic changes, which occur in a language's sound system. On the other hand, " alternation" refers to changes that happen synchronically (within the language of an individual speaker, depending on the neighbouring sounds) and do not change the language's underlying system (for example, the ''-s'' in the English plural can be pronounced differently depend ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
