Diacritics in Early Tayal Manuals

Fredric Francis Weingartner

Variétés Sinologiques no.92

© Taipei Ricci Institute, 2002

265 pages / 16 x 21.5 cm / hard cover

Language : English

ISBN 957-9390-38-X

 USD 15 / Euro 15 / NT 300

Diacritics in Eariy Tayal Manuals

-- Fredric Francis Weingartner –

This book examines a set of manuals devoted to the teaching of the Tayal Language, the Tayals being one of the main Aboriginal groups of Taiwan. Analyzing in a systematic way the sound charts and glossaries that this set of manuals offers, Fredric Weingartner allows the reader to better grasp the differences noted from one Tayal dialect to another as well as the development of pedagogy in the teaching of aboriginal languages.

The author brings to attention the important role played by diacritics. Diacritics are tiny signs occupying writing spaces and playing different functions: phonological, morphological and syntactic. For instance, in one of the sound charts of Tayal language, a specific sound is represented by a sign borrowed from Chinese writing, it has no specific name and is described as silent. A diacritic aside of it gives it a name and transforms it into a vowel of Tayal, the quality of which will be indicated with diacritics of a different kind, involving morphology a term unknown among early Tayal linguists. They were even less familiar with notions derived from syntax as syntactic units or syntactic diacritics. That explains why none of the maanuals here reviewed attempted to formulate syntactic rules.

At the end of the period under description highly abstract strategies had already taken over the functions of lower level diacritics. The term syntactic diacritics may be kept so as to prevent the study of diacritics be seen as a historical discipline.

This book will be helpful to people interested in the study and the teaching of aboriginal languages.

In appendix, the book offers the first ever published glossaries of Tayal-Chinese-English and English-Chinese-Tayal.