The Bunun language is spoken by the Bunun people of Taiwan. It is one of the Formosan languages, a geographic group of Austronesian languages, and is subdivided in five dialects: Isbukun, Takbunuaz, Takivatan, Takibaka and Takituduh. Isbukun, the dominant dialect, is mainly spoken in the south of Taiwan. Takbunuaz and Takivatan are mainly spoken in the center of the country. Takibaka and Takituduh both are northern dialects. A sixth dialect, Takipulan, became extinct in the 1970s. The Saaroa and Kanakanabu, two smaller minority groups who share their territory with an Isbukun Bunun group, have also adopted Bunun as their vernacular.
Dialects
Li splits the Bunun dialects into 3 main branches — Northern, Central, and Isbukun. Isbukun, the prestige dialect, is also the most divergent dialect. The most conservative dialects are spoken in the north.
Proto-Bunun
*Isbukun
*North-Central
**Northern
***Takituduh
***Takibakha
**Central
***Takbanuaz
***Takivatan
Bunun was originally spoken in and around Sinyi Township in Nantou County. From the 17th century onwards, the Bunun people expanded towards the south and east, absorbing other ethnic groups such as the Saaroa, Kanakanabu, and Thao. Bunun is spoken in an area stretching from Ren-ai Township in Nantou in the north to Yan-ping Township in Taitung in the south. Isbukun is distributed throughout Nantou, Taitung, and Kaohsiung. Takbanuað is spoken in Nantou and southern Hualien County. Takivatan is spoken in Nantou and central Hualien. Both Takituduh and Takibakha are spoken in Nantou.
Phonology
Consonants
Orthographic notes:
are usually represented as ⟨b⟩, ⟨d⟩.
is represented as ⟨z⟩, as ⟨ng⟩, as ⟨'⟩, and as ⟨j⟩.
Notes:
The glides exist, but are derived from the underlying vowels to meet the requirements that syllables must have onset consonants. They are therefore not part of the consonant inventory.
In the Isbukun dialect, often occurs in final or post-consonantal position and in initial and intervocalic position, whereas other dialects have in both of these positions.
While Isbukun drops the intervocalic glottal stops found in other dialects, also occurs where occurs in other dialects.
The alveolar affricate occurs in the Taitung variety of Isbukun, usually represented in other dialects as.
Vowels
Notes:
does not occur in Isbukun.
Grammar
Overview
Bunun is a verb-initial language and has an Austronesian alignment system or focus system. This means that Bunun clauses do not have a nominative–accusative or absolutive–ergative alignment, but that arguments of a clause are ordered according to which participant in the event described by the verb is 'in focus'. In Bunun, four distinct roles can be in focus:
the agent: the person or thing that is doing the action or achieving/maintaining a state;
the undergoer: the person or thing that is somehow participating in the action without being an agent; there are three kinds of undergoers:
* patients: persons or things to whom an action is done or an event happens
* instruments: things which are used to perform an action
* beneficiaries : the persons for whom an action is done or for whom an event happens
the locative participant: the location where an action takes place; in languages with a Philippine-style voice system, spatial location is often at the same level in a clause as agents and patients, rather than being an adverbial clause, like in English.
Which argument is in focus is indicated on the verb by a combination of prefixes and suffixes.
a verb in agent focus is often unmarked, but can get the prefix ma- or - more rarely - pa- or ka-
a verb in undergoer focus gets a suffix -un
a verb locative focus gets a suffix -an
Many other languages with a focus system have different marking for patients, instruments and beneficiaries, but this is not the case in Bunun. The focussed argument in a Bunun clause will normally always occur immediately after the verb and is in the Isbukun dialect marked with a post-nominal marker a. Bunun has a very large class of auxiliary verbs. Concepts that are expressed by auxiliaries include:
In fact, Bunun auxiliaries express all sorts of concepts that in English would be expressed by adverbial phrases, with the exception of time and place, which are normally expressed with adverbial phrases.
Word classes
Takivatan Bunun has the following word classes. ;Open classes
Nouns
Verbs
Adjectives
;Closed classes
Demonstratives
Anaphoric pronouns
Personal pronouns
Numerals
Place words
Time words
Manner words
Question words
Auxiliaries
Affixes
Bunun is morphologically agglutinative language and has a very elaborate set of derivational affixes, most of which derive verbs from other word classes. Some of these prefixes are special in that they do not only occur in the verb they derive, but are also foreshadowed on a preceding auxiliary. These are called lexical prefixes or anticipatory prefixes and only occur in Bunun and a small number of other Formosan languages. Below are some Takivatan Bunun verbal prefixes from De Busser.
Type of prefix
Neutral
Causative
Accusative
Movement from
mu-
pu-
ku-
Dynamic event
ma-
pa-
ka-
Stative event
ma- / mi-
pi-
ka- / ki-
Inchoative event
min-
pin-
kin-
In short:
Movement from: Cu-
Dynamic event: Ca-
Stative event: Ci-
Inchoative event: Cin-
Neutral: mV-
Causative: pV-
Accusative: kV-
A more complete list of Bunun affixes from De Busser is given below. ;Focus
agent focus : -Ø
undergoer focus : -un
locative focus : -an
;Tense-aspect-mood affixes
na- irrealis. This is also the least bound TAM prefix.
-aŋ progressive
-in perfective
-in- past/resultative
-i- past infix which occurs only occasionally
;Participant cross-reference
-Ø agent
-un patient
-an locative
is- instrumental
ki- beneficiary
;Locative prefixes
Stationary ‘at, in’: i-
Itinerary ‘arrive at’: atan-, pan-, pana-
Allative ‘to’: mu-, mun-
Terminative ‘until’: sau-
Directional ‘toward, in the direction of’: tan-, tana-
