Case Syncretism in Kasavakan P uyuma: A Field Data Analysis of Noun Phrase Markers (2025)

Abstract: Previous research has reported differing patterns of case syncretism across three dialects of Puyuma, an Austronesian language of Taiwan (Nanwang, Katipul, Ulivelivek). This study presents a quantitative analysis of case syncretism of noun phrase markers and disambiguation strategies in the Kasavakan dialect. Our dataset comprises 377 sentences elicited from five speakers, which we annotated for voice, potential semantic ambiguity, word order, and case marking of different semantic roles. We find evidence for a high degree of syncretism between genitive and nominative markers, alongside a decline in the use of genitive forms, particularly for common definite nouns. Some overlap with oblique markers is also attested, suggesting varying degrees of case syncretism between speakers. Topicalization appears to be the most frequent disambiguation strategy, while the order of non-topicalized noun phrases does not seem to aid disambiguation. Other factors, including age and individual experiences may contribute to inter-participant variation. These findings contribute to a more complete understanding of case marking in Puyuma by adding new empirical data from the Kasavakan dialect, where patterns of syncretism and disambiguation differ from previously described varieties.

## introduction puyuma is a formosan language spoken primarily in taitung county in southeastern taiwan by the puyuma people, whose population is approximately 13,000 @xcite . it is particularly relevant to the reconstruction of proto-austronesian, as it has been argued to represent one of the primary branches of the austronesian language family @xcite . traditionally, the puyuma community consists of eight main villages: puyuma (nanwang), katipul, rikavung, tamalakaw, kasavakan, pinaski, alipai, and @xcite . for educational purposes, the language is classified into four dialects: puyuma (nanwang), katipul, kasavakan, and @xcite . similar to other austronesian languages, central features of puyuma syntax are its use of noun phrase markers (npms) and the distinction between actor voice and undergoer voice. in actor voice (av), the subject of the verb is the actor (example 1). in undergoer voice, an argument other than the actor becomes the subject, while the actor is relegated to non-subject status. note how in the above examples, all of which are from the nanwang dialect, the non-subject actor is marked with an oblique npm (see examples 2 and 3). this is not always the case in the katipul and ulivelivek dialects, which sometimes use a genitive marker @xcite . in the nanwang dialect, genitive and oblique npms are fully syncretic (see figure 1 ). while the use of npms has been documented for the other three dialects, the kasavakan dialect remains understudied in this regard. to provide a more comprehensive understanding of puyuma npms, it is of research interest to document the kasavakan npms. we initially collected an explorative data set from only one speaker who seemed to display a distinct pattern of case syncretism, as shown in example 5: here, the non-subject actor, simuy, is marked with a nominative npm, suggesting that case syncretism might go in the opposite direction of nanwang, with nominative and genitive being syncretic. however, data collected from four additional speakers showed a complex and variable pattern with notable inter-speaker variability. a quantitative approach was thus adopted to account for the nature of the distribution of these markers more effectively. the goals of this study were as follows: this paper is structured as follows. section 2 reviews prior work by @xcite , which describes npm use and disambiguation strategies in nanwang, ulivelivek, and katipul puyuma. section 3 outlines the data collection and annotation process. section 4 presents our findings, including the analytical approach and illustrative examples from our dataset. section 5 discusses the implications of the results and offers additional observations. ## literature review to our knowledge, teng ( 2009 ) is the only work that covers the differences between the patterns of case syncretism between different dialects of puyuma in detail. citing @xcite , teng distinguishes between diachronic and synchronic syncretism, the former referring to forms being merged over time so that the distinction between the two forms disappears, and the latter referring to one form covering two functions in certain cases whereas those functions have separate forms elsewhere in the language. teng's reconstruction of proto-puyuma npms contains two genitive markers: ni for personal singular nouns and nina for common definite nouns. in the case of nanwang puyuma, teng argues that the genitive case has completely syncretized with the oblique case, resulting in a pattern where rather than a three-way distinction between subjects (nominative), non-subject actors and possessors (genitive) and other non-core arguments (oblique), the distinction is now between subjects (nominative) and non-subjects (oblique). as illustrated in figure 1 , this has resulted in genitive markers becoming obsolete. in katipul, which is geographically closest to kasavakan, genitive markers are replaced by nominative markers rather than oblique markers for common definite nouns, such as in example 6: in example 6, the semantics of the verb alone are sufficient to disambiguate the actor, whereas in example 7, using nominative na to mark both nouns would result in the sentence being semantically ambiguous. using the genitive marker nina clearly marks the snake as the actor in this sentence. the fact that genitive markers have not been entirely replaced by nominative markers in katipul puyuma becomes even more apparent when considering personal singular nouns, where a distinction between nominative and genitive is obligatory. interestingly, common indefinite nouns show the same genitive-oblique syncretism as seen in nanwang puyuma. the situation is similar in ulivelivek puyuma, with one difference being that genitive-oblique syncretism also applies to common definite nonsubject actors (see example 8), but not to possessors (see example 9): 8. (ulivelivek, teng, 2009) @xmath0.@xmath1.def kadaw sun it was burned by the sun. 9. (ulivelivek, teng, 2009) @xmath2.@xmath3.def suan dog the dog's belly teng's findings can be summarized as follows: ## dataset the dataset foot_1 we present was selected from sentences collected during interviews with five different speakers of kasavakan puyuma (4 female and 1 male, born between 1953 and 1958). all interviews took place in the first half of 2024 as part of a class on field linguistics. communication with the speakers was conducted through mandarin. speakers were interviewed separately so that they could not directly comment on each other's sentences. the final dataset contains 377 sentences, some of which were directly elicited, while others were presented to the speaker and rated acceptable or unacceptable (see figure 2 ). the criteria for inclusion of a sentence in the final dataset were as follows: