Mchalfo1/Final Project
My final project for Ling073 is beginning the development of a Paiwan transducer.
Paiwan
Paiwan is a Formosan language spoken by the Paiwan people of Taiwan. As of a 2008 Unesco survey there were approx. 15,000 speakers of Paiwan. Paiwan is a predicate-initial, polysynthetic language. There are many affixes, some with multiple forms; pronouns which may be free or bound; and nouns, adjectives, and adverbs which may act in similar ways to verbs. Paiwan is written using the latin script. There are many resources for Paiwan, including linguistic publications, textbooks, dictionaries, and websites, though most are in Chinese (not particularly accessible to me, who cannot speak or really read the language).
Process
Difficulties
Any work with languages will face difficulties. Below are some of the difficulties I am dealing with:
Language and Resources
Being an Indigenous language from Taiwan, there is not as wide of acess and number of resources and documentation when compared to a language such as Chinese. Resources and documentation available on Paiwan have a variety of issues such as being non-copyable (makes problems for compiling a corpus); not in a language I can read (I do not know Chinese); have lots of Chinese or English words spread throughout; or are from linguistics publications and have morpheme boundaries built into teh Paiwan sentences (useful for anaysis but not for compiling the corpus).
Dialects
There are multiple dialects and dialect groups in Paiwan. These groupings are not consistent from author to author. In addition, there are a number of ways teh dilaects and dialect groups are named and called, including within the literature, making it even more difficult to find multiple publications on a single Paiwan dialect.
Orthography
There are a few different orthographies and spelling, some which are varied because of dialect, some which are varied because of the author. This provides difficulty not just because of the problems with dialect categorization, but because it is not always clear which characters in the Paiwan community orthography relate to the characters used by linguists.
Affixes
There are many affixes in Paiwan, sometimes with multiple forms (see Voice). Many of the prefixes and suffixes are simple to implement (thought there are a few difficult ones), but infixes, which regardless of number of kinds are commonly used in Paiwan, are not a simple process with Apertium. In addition, I hope that once I reach a better understanding of which verbs take which forms of affix (for those with multiple) the verbs will fall into simple, defined categories, though all my training as a linguist suggests that this will not be the case.
Technology
I do not have a computer science background, which makes fixing certain issues difficult, and I cannot automate certain tasks. This can prove especially problematic when trying to evalute the accuracy of my system. Another way technology provides difficulty for the future of this project is because of me being about to graduate. I will not have access to computers that are set up to do this, and would need to set this up on my own with my own system, something I know is possible, but am not sure how well I can do.
Next Steps
Although I am about to graduate, I do not plan on letting go of this project once I leave Haverford (and the TriCo).
- Focus in on one dialect
- Research morphology deeper
- Expand corpus
- textbooks
- linguistic publications
- www.Klokah.tw dictionary and resources
- Expand Lexicon
- Add twol and rlx rules
Grammar
Sentence Structure
Paiwan is a predicate initial language. The predicate, often but not always a verb, will be the first word in the sentence. The ambiguity this causes for the role of nouns in the sentence is solved by case markers, which mark case as well as plurality.
Verbs
Voice
In Paiwan there are four voices, separated into two categories. The two categories are Active Voice (AV) and Non-Active Voice (NAV), with NAV being further separated into Goal Voice, Instrument Voice, and Locative Voice (not to be confused with the Locative Prefix).
Personal Pronouns
In Paiwan, personal pronouns may be free or bound. these pronouns have number and person, but not gender. The first person pronouns also have separate categories for inclusive and exclusive. The free pronouns have different prefixes corresponding to the three cases, nominative, genitive, and oblique.
| Number | Person | Nominative | Genitive | Oblique | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Singular | 1st | tiaken | niaken | tjanuaken | |
| 2nd | tisun | nisun | tjanusun | ||
| 3rd | timadju | nimadju | tjaymadju | ||
| Plural | 1st | Inclusive | titjen | nitjen | tjanuitjen |
| Exclusive | tiamen | niamen | tjanuamen | ||
| 2nd | timun | nimun | tjanumun | ||
| 3rd | tiamadju | nimadju | tj(a)iamadju | ||
The bound pronouns fall into two categories depending on case (there are no oblique bound pronouns). There are also no third person bound pronouns. The nonimative bound pronouns are suffxes, while the genitive bound pronouns are prefixes. The genitive bound pronouns can also be used to mark possession.
| Number | Person | Nominative | Genitive | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Singular | 1st | =(a)ken | ku= | |
| 2nd | =(e)sun | su= | ||
| Plural | 1st | Inclusive | =(i)tjen | tja= |
| Exclusive | =(a)men | nia= | ||
| 2nd | =(e)mun | nu= | ||
Case Markers
Case markers are words which mark the case of associated words, especially nouns. For predicate-initial languages this is important for clarifying the roles of the predicate's arguments.
| Personal? | Number | Nominative | Genitive | Oblique |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Personal Noun | Singular | ti | ni | tjay |
| Plural | tia | nia | tj(a)ia | |
| Common Noun | a | nua/na | tua/ta/tu | |
Transducer
Total Corpus
These numbers are as of 5/5/2023
- Coverage: 54.6%
- Ambiguity: ~1.06
Number of tokens:
- Full Corpus: 128648
- wiki: 122527
- Genesis: 2441
- Textbook: 9106
Lexicon Counts
- Lexicons: 37
- Lexicon entries: 370
- Patterns: 12
- Pattern entries: 24
Root Lexicons:
- NounRoot: 107
- ProperNounRoot: 149
- VerbRoot: 14
- NumberRoot: 10
- PronounRoot: 7
- NomCliticPronoun: 5
- GenCliticPronoun: 5
- AdverbRoot: 2
- CaseMarkerRoot: 5
- PrepositionRoot: 1
- Tens: 1
- NumberAnd: 1
- SayRoot: 1
- BeHaveRoot: 1
- Link: 1
Morphology Lexicons:
- MarkerCase: 3
- VerbPrefix: 4
- VerbSuffix: 2
- Infix: 2
- ConjuntionPrefix: 1
- PronounCase: 3
- LocativeAffix: 1
Developed Resources
- Paiwan Transducer: https://github.com/erchalfoun/ling073-pwn
- Spreadsheet of Paiwan words by dialect from Klokah (in progress, very preliminary): https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/16waihA1bvzvOVU87oQg3XJUs-58o1DVCFpZX_W4odGY/edit?usp=sharing
External Resources
Primary Sources, Dictionaries, Textbooks, etc.
- Paiwan Wikipedia: https://pwn.wikipedia.org/wiki/sitjumaq_na_sapitj
- Paiwan Textbook Ebooks: https://alilin.cip.gov.tw/tw/ebooks?tag=610&search_type=3&home_cat=0&button=&keyword=&cat=&zone=&city=0&area=
- Paiwan Genesis Chapters 1-3: https://archive.org/details/rosettaproject_pwn_gen-1
- Ferrell, Raleigh. 1982. Paiwan Dictionary. Canberra A.C.T. Australia: Dept. of Linguistics Research School of Pacific Studies Australian National University. [1]
- 鄭仲樺, 曹永春編著 鄭仲樺 editor and 曹永春 曹永春. 2019. 排灣語丹路方言分類詞彙手冊 = Binutangluan a Kai : A Handbook of Classified Vocabulary of Paiwan Butanglu Dialect. Chu ban ed. Pingdong Shi: 屏東縣政府.[2]
- 鄭仲樺, 洪阿蘭 et al. 2019. 排灣語筏灣方言分類詞彙手冊 = Pinaiwanan Nua Sepaiwan a Kai a Pinapapangapangaljan a Sunatj : A Handbook of Classified Vocabulary of Paiwan Kapaiwanan Dialect. Chu ban ed. Pingdong Shi: 屏東縣政府.[3]
- Early, Robert, John Whitehorn and Australian National University. 2003. One Hundred Paiwan Texts. Canberra: Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies Australian National University.
- https://abvd.eva.mpg.de/austronesian/language.php?id=177
Linguistics Writings & Publications
- Chang Anna Hsiou-chuan. 2006. “A Reference Grammar of Paiwan.” dissertation.
- Hsieh Fuhui. 2016. “On the Development of the Lexeme Aya in Paiwan.” Oceanic Linguistics 225–45.
- Tsai Wei-Tien Dylan and Chun-Ming Wu. 2012. “Conjunctive Reduction Revisited: Evidence from Mayrinax Atayal and Southern Paiwan.” Oceanic Linguistics 160–81.
- Hsieh Fuhui. 2011. “The Conceptualization of Emotion Events in Three Formosan Languages: Kavalan Paiwan and Saisiyat.” Oceanic Linguistics 65–92.
- Lee Amy Pei-jung. 2011. “Metaphorical Euphemisms of Relationship and Death in Kavalan Paiwan and Seediq.” Oceanic Linguistics 351–79.
- Zeitoun, Elizabeth, Lillian M. Huang, Marie M. Yeh, Anna H. Chang, and Joy J. Wu. 1996. “The Temporal Aspectual and Modal Systems of Some Formosan Languages: A Typological Perspective.” Oceanic Linguistics 21–56.
- http://www.sil.org/resources/archives/26100
- Tryon Darrell T. 2011. Comparative Austronesian Dictionary : An Introduction to Austronesian Studies. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. Retrieved May 6 2023 (https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110884012).
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