A Reference Grammar of Puyuma, an Austronesian Language of Taiwan

Book excerpt: "The Puyuma people reside in southeastern Taiwan in Taitung City and Peinan Township in Taitung County. There are still fourteen extant Formosan (Austronesian) languages in Taiwan, but only thirteen indigenous groups are officially recognised by the Taiwanese government. The present study investigates the Nanwang dialect of the Puyuma language, spoken by the people in Nanwang and Paoshang Suburbs of Taitung City in southern Taiwan. The aim of this grammar is to describe the phonology and morphosyntax of Puyuma. The work is descriptive in nature, and the theoretical framework employed is Basic Linguistic Theory (BLT). BLT emphasises the need to describe each language in its own terms, rather than imposing on it concepts derived from other languages. Thus, in this study, the author abandons traditional terms used by linguists studying Philippine-type languages, such as agent focus, patient focus, locative focus, or instrumental focus, and replaces them with the terms like transitive and intransitive that are more familiar to most of the worlds linguists."--Provided by publisher.