Paiwan

How Ferrell mapped the dialect zones

Paiwan has no sharp dialect boundaries, and the zones are a scholar's grouping. Ferrell divided the language into A and B zones. Kuɬaɬau, in zone A1, was the dialect he used in his 1982 Paiwan dictionary because it is widely understood and keeps various sound distinctions. Tjuaqatsiɬay is the southernmost dialect and Tjukuvuɬ one of the northernmost. Tjavuaɬi and Tjakuvukuvuɬ make up the eastern zone. Cheng in 2016 proposed a revised classification.

What younger speakers say differently

Kuljaljau Paiwan has 23 or 24 consonants and 4 vowels; /h/ appears only in loanwords. Younger speakers tend to say [l] for /ʎ/. Northern Paiwan has lost its palatal consonants recently, and a few conservative speakers keep them only as variants. Mudan village has a fricative [ɣ] where the rest of the south tends to trill, and at the start of a word the old *k has become a glottal stop.

Which affixes mark intent

Paiwan verbs have four kinds of focus, and a separate set of affixes grades how deliberate an action is. From most intended to least: ki- and pa-, then -m- and si-, which leave it open, then ma- and se-. Time words are built from paired prefixes. With -tiaw, nu- gives 'tomorrow' and ka- 'yesterday'; with -sawni, 'soon' and 'a little while ago'.