Towards a grammar of Takivatan Bunun : selected topics

Bunun is a language spoken by one of the Austronesian minority groups on the island of Taiwan. Its most marked characteristics are its complex verbal morphology and its unusual argument alignment system. Takivatan Bunun is the third-largest of its five extant dialects and is spoken by a number of small settlements in two counties in the central mountains and at the east coast of the island. Based on more than one year of field work data, this dissertation explores aspects of the grammar of Takivatan as spoken by the people of the villages Ma-yuan and Qi-mei in Hualien County. It is intended as a preliminary to a full descriptive grammar. After an introductory chapter and an overview of Takivatan phonology, Chapter 3 discusses how words and affixes can be defined in Takivatan and gives a general overview of word building processes. Chapter 4 is a concise treatment of compounding, an uncommon and unproblematic process in Takivatan. Chapter 5 discusses TAM affixes. Chapter 6 concisely describes the grammatical and derivational uses of focus suffixes. Chapter 7 is an elaborate discussion and classification of the large set of verbal prefixes in Takivatan. The final chapter concludes with an overview of definiteness markers, personal pronouns, demonstratives and other pronominal forms.