Thao (⫽θaʊ⫽ thow; Thao: Thau a lalawa), also known as Sao,^[2] is the nearly extinct language of the Thao people,^[3] an indigenous people of Taiwan from the Sun Moon Lake region in central Taiwan. It is a Formosan language of the Austronesian family;^[4] Barawbaw and Shtafari are dialects.^{[citation needed]}

Name

The name Thao literally means "person", from Proto-Austronesian *Cau. It is therefore cognate with the name of the Tsou.

History

Speaking Thao was criminalised under Japanese rule of Taiwan and later the Kuomintang regime, contributing to its critically endangered status today.^[5]

A Thao-English dictionary by Robert A. Blust was published in 2003 by Academia Sinica's Institute of Linguistics.^[6]

In 2014, there were four L1 speakers and a fluent L2 speaker living in Ita Thaw (伊達邵) village (traditionally called Barawbaw), all but one of whom were over the age of sixty.^{[citation needed]} Two elderly native speakers died in December of that year, including chief Tarma (袁明智), age 75.^{[citation needed]} Four elderly L1 speakers and some semi-speakers were reported in 2021.^[1]

Phonology

Consonants

Orthographic notes:

• /θ ð ʃ/ are written ⟨th z sh⟩. However, /θ/ is written ⟨c⟩ in Blust's dictionary.
• /ɬ/ is written ⟨lh⟩.
• /ŋ/ is written ⟨ng⟩. However, /ŋ/ is written ⟨g⟩ in Blust's dictionary.
• /ʔ/ is written ⟨'⟩.

Notes:

• The glides /j w/ are derived from the underlying vowels /i u/ to meet the requirements that syllables must have onset consonants and to indicate stress placement accurately.
• [v] is an allophone of /w/ occurring intervocalically.

Vowels

Notes:

• Stress is penultimate, otherwise can be written ⟨á í ú⟩ as in "dadú", but doubling ⟨aa ii uu⟩ is also frequently used, as in "daduu".
• [e] and [o] occur as allophones of /i/ and /u/, respectively, when preceded or followed either by /q/ or /r/.

Morphology

Thao has two or arguably three patterns of reduplication: Ca-reduplication, full reduplication, and rightward reduplication (which is sometimes considered to be a form of full reduplication).

Thao verbs have the following types of focus (Blust 2003:239).

1. Actor: -um- (present), ma- (future)
2. Patient: -in, -in-
3. Locative: -an

Syntax

Thao word order can be both SVO and VSO, although the former is derived from Taiwanese Hokkien (Blust 2003:228).

The Thao personal marker is "ti" (Blust 2003:228). Negatives include "ani" and "antu"; "ata tu" is used in "don't" constructions. The perfect is marked by "iza", the past by an infix just after the primary onset consonant "-in-" and the future by the prefix "a-". Imperatives are marked by "-í" and softer imperatives or requests roughly translated as "please" by "-uan" sometimes spelled "-wan" which can co-occur with "-í".

Pronouns

The Thao personal pronouns below are from Blust (2003:207). Note that there is only 1 form each for "we (exclusive)," "you (plural)" and "they."

Other pronouns include:

Affixes

The following affixes are sourced from Blust (2003:92-188) and adjusted to the modern spelling.