Abstract
This thesis aims to describe the phonology of Plngawan Atayal, an endangered Austronesian language. Under the framework of Optimality theory, this thesis focuses on two general topics, which are the general phonology and affixation induced phonology. This thesis begins with discussing the general phonology of Plngawan Atayal. The discussion includes the distribution of phonemes and their related phonological variations. These variations will come forth or be manifested in affixed forms. For the purpose of manifesting the variations on the surface, a series of affixed data are provided. Structures and related restrictions of syllables are also part of the discussion. It is shown that although every word in Plngawan must begin with a consonant, onsetless syllables can occur word-medially. In that case, when there is a word-media onsetless syllable, adjacent vowels stand in hiatus relation. However, wherever in a word (word-initial, medial, final), consonant clusters must be heterosyllabic. Words can end with an open syllable. While previous literatures on Plngawan consider CVC as the maximum syllable structure, it is CGVC which is considered as the maximum syllable structure in this thesis. In Plngawan Atayal, almost every phonological variation is induced by affixation. The phonological variations induced by prefixes and suffixes are introduced separately. Based on different environments, infixal prefixes could induce different variations, e.g., nasal place assimilation and syncope. Suffixation could also induce different phonological variations—vowel coalescence and transguttural vowel assimilation. When the infixal prefixes precede consonants, the nasal consonant of um, in will agree in place features with the adjacent consonant. Therefore, the agent focus marker um actually has two variants which are /un/ and /uŋ/. Moreover, I also justify that the contraction form of umin should be unn but un. Observing words affixed with in, it is found that because of the in specific restriction (ALIGN (in, R, σ R)), in affixing will incur syncope. In that case, contraction of umin is also the victim of syncope. In words which end with an open syllable, attaching a suffix will incur coalescence because vowel clusters are not allowed in affixed form. If a word ends with a guttural consonant, affixing locative focus (locative case) an will incur vowel assimilation. In Plngawan Atayal, either nasal place assimilation or vowel assimilation are regressive. Finally, because no example showing high vowels followed by glottal fricative (ih, uh]#) in Plngawan is found currently, I use examples from Sediq to support for transguttural vowel assimilation. Through the cross-dialectal comparison between Sediq and Plngawan, some of the similarities and differences between these two languages are provided.