Product Code Database
Tsou (Cou) is an Austronesian language spoken by the Tsou people of Taiwan. Tsou-speakers are located in the west-central mountains southeast of the Chiayi/Alishan Range area in Taiwan.
Tsou is spoken in the following villages:Li (1979), Zeitoun (2005) All of the villages are located in Alishan Township, Chiayi County except for Mamahavana (Jiumei), which is located in Xinyi Township, Nantou County. Both the native Tsou names and Chinese names are given.
Tapangʉ (Tapaŋʉ)
Tfuya (Tfuya)
Duhtu (Luhtu)
Iimucu – extinct
| +Tsou consonants !colspan=2 | ! Labial consonant ! Alveolar ! Velar consonant ! Glottal |
The plosives are not aspirated. Phonetically aspirated stops are actually sequences of stop plus , as can be seen by the fact that they cannot cluster with a third consonant (see phonotactics below), and by morphological alternations such as ~ "to trade".
According to spectrogram, appears to be a glottal fricative in most environments, but approaches a velar next to the central vowel , as in 'palm, sole'. However, the fact that the sequences and occur, when no other homorganic sequence is allowed, suggests that and may not both be glottal. (Additional evidence that might best be analyzed as velar is the fact that is not found, and that is only found medially, in the single known word "fox".)
The voiceless sibilants, and , are palatalized to and before the front vowels and . However, the voiced sibilant is not affected by this environment.
The implosives and are uncommon. Both may be glottalized ( or maybe ) in intervocalic position. In addition, alveolar has some unusual allophony: About a third of speakers pronounce it with a lateral release, or before as a lateral approximant , as in "maple". Indeed, Tsuchida (1976) transcribed it as a preglottalized lateral, .
For example, the verb "to cut with a bolo" takes stress on the syllables and , and is realized as . However, this does not explain all consonant clusters, many of which are lexically determined.
Stops, oral or nasal, may or may not have a release burst before a nasal stop, depending on the speaker. The initial clusters are unusual cross-linguistically. The spectrum shows that the tongue moves towards an alveolar articulation during the of , demonstrating that it is not articulated as a velar. The initial clusters and are sometimes realized as two released stops, but sometimes with a single release, resembling ejective consonants in other languages. ( is again notably missing, except intervocalically, despite the fact that is the most common ejective cross-linguistically.)
Tsou has three main types of questions.Zeitoun (2005):282
Tsou has the following types of clauses:
Important function words are:
Case markers are as follows, with nominative forms placed before slashes and oblique forms placed after them (Zeitoun 2005:274). The nominative form is given when there are no slashes.
Tsou is unique for not having any preposition-like elements, instead using nouns or verbs to express these notions.
Tsou verbs can be divided into five major classes (I, II, III-1, III-2, IV, V-1, V-2) based on morphological alternations (Zeitoun 2005:285). Tsou verbs do not have as many morphological distinctions as other Formosan languages do, since the Tsou language makes more extensive use of auxiliary verbs. For instance, there are no temporal/aspectual distinctions, separate markings for imperatives, and stative/dynamic distinctions. Nevertheless, Tsou still preserves the causative poa- (allomorphs: p-, pa-).
Tsou auxiliary verbs can carry temporal/aspectual and modal information as well as voice. They are marked for the following voices:
These auxiliary verbs can be divided into three classes:
Tsou has the following aspectual suffixes:
| +Tfuya Tsou Personal Pronouns |
Tens are derived with the circumfix (confix) m- -hʉ. There is also a u/ʉ vowel harmony phenomenon.
Due to globalization, people are always in search of finding better lives if they're not completely happy, and young people are leaving the villages and looking for jobs in big cities. Because of this, children are not using the language and are not getting exposed to the culture as frequently, which means the language is not getting passed down to future generations.
One survey from 1999 found that only 9% of the indigenous children could speak their native language, and most children preferred to use Mandarin, which is the official Taiwan language. Tsou is mostly used by community elders in ceremonies and certain gatherings. Unfortunately, since the parents are not fluent and do not view the language as practical for children, the language is rarely spoken at home. The language is found more in school settings where children attend cultural learning programs.
The Tsou language is recognized by the government. The government has allocated money dedicated to bring language programs to elementary and junior high schools, but the funds are sometimes inconsistent, which negatively affects the programs. It helped that the Martial law was lifted in 1987 and that people could freely speak their native languages again, however, so many other dominant languages were used that several native indigenous languages disappeared.
The elders care about their language and worry that it may not survive in the future, so they welcome any help linguists may provide. In addition, the community has programs to maintain the language. One example is when children get to sing Tsou folk songs in kindergarten and continue to become exposed to other cultural programs through elementary school. People are relying heavily on these kids to keep the language, music, and culture alive. There are programs for elementary and middle school kids to learn the language. Community members are very willing to get involved with events. It is difficult to teach the language because there is a lack of good teaching materials. Schools do not make learning the indigenous language a priority because if an event deemed more important occurs, teachers are likely to put off the language lesson. In addition, students have to worry about studying English language, Mandarin, and entrance exam materials, so time is limited and the ethnic language is not a priority in the minds of the younger generation.
|
|
