摘要
This paper is based on the data collected during the winters of 1961-62 and 1962-63, when the writer participated the field trips to Kaohsiung County, Southern Taiwan, guided by the late Professor Tung Tung-ho.
The La?alua and Kanakanavu are two tiny groups among the aboriginal tribes in the hilly district of Kaohsiung County, their respective populations in recent years figuring just a few dozens and a little over one hundred. The La?alua live at Tao-yuan Ts'un and Kao-chung Ts'un, Tao-yuan Hsiang, and the Kanakanavu at Min-chuan Ts'un and Min-sheng Ts'un, San-min Hsiang. The languages of these two groups are both reaching the stage of extinction and being replaced by other aboriginal dialects and Mandarin.
The present study consists of three topics: (1) comparison of the phonetic system, covering vowels, consonants, the structure of syllables and stresses; (2) comparison of words; and (3) comparison of the morphological features, covering affixes, reduplication, other inflectional features of the verbs and syntactic features.
Although the resemblances as found between these two languages are striking, no conclusion as to their relations has been reached yet.