Notes on Pazeh phonology and morphology

Pazeh, once the heritage of a substantial language community in the Puli ba sin of central Taiwan, appears to be down to its last fluent speaker. Sever al linguists have worked on the language in recent years, all drawing on th e same resource, but arriving at somewhat different transcriptions and anal yses. This paper presents an analysis of the synchronic and historical phon ology of Pazeh, and provides the most complete inventory of affixes describ ed to date. Loanwords suggest a period of fairly intensive contact with Tao kas, thereby implying that the Pazeh were on the western plain within the r elatively recent past. The linguistic position of Pazeh remains obscure, be cause some apparent exclusively shared innovations point to a closer relati onship with Saisiyat, while others point to a closer relationship with Thao and the core group of Western Plains languages (Taokas, Papora, Hoanya, Fa vorlang/Babuza). Both in its phonology and its morphology, this little-stud ied language sheds light on aspects of Proto-Austronesian that are only fee bly attested in the language family as a whole.