Paiwan Every Day 67: vuvu

Reconstruction of Proto Austronesian (PAn) by linguists has been much cited by Taiwan's indigenous activists to back up the claim of "indigeneity". It is the theory that proposes with scientific evidences that Taiwan is the home of Austronesian-speaking peoples.

Yet, reconstructing a hypothetical proto language is laborious. Robert Blust reconstructs PAn via the study of personal pronouns (1977); Malcolm Ross attempts the same with PAn morphosyntax (2002); and today, I read Ross's paper looking at case-markers and case-marked pronoun sets for the same purpose (2006). There are still many other contributors.

Paiwan case-markers
NOM      GEN       ACC      OBL         LOC      Ligature
    a         nua/na      ---      tua/ta/tu     ---             a

Paiwan Personal case-markers
      NOM      GEN      ACC      OBL      LOC   
S      ti             ni           ---         tjai         ---  
P      tia          nia          ---         tjai         ---   

ti madraw a ngadan nua nia vuvu. 

In English:
The name of our grandmother is madraw.

Glossary: 

1. NOM: free or clitic form serving as SBJ or VSBJ
2. GEN: free or clitic form serving as AGT and often as PSRA or occasionally PSRN
3. ACC: free form serving as PAT only 
4. OBL: free form serving as PAT and LOC (and sometimes in other peripheral functions)
5. LOC: free form serving as LOC (and sometimes in other peripheral functions)
6. SBJ: subject of verbal and nonverbal clauses
7. VSBJ: subject of verbal clause
8. AGT: agent argument of undergoer-voice clause
9. PSRA: possessor adnominal ('my' etc) without a ligature
10. PSRN: possessor nominal ('mine' etc)
11. PAT : patient argument of actor-voice clause (e.g. patient when, say, a location or instrument is subject)

Reading: