Negation in Taiwan’s Yilan Creole:Focusing on -nay and –ng

Abstract

In Taiwan, contact between Atayal and Japanese has produced a little known creole which we have named ‘Yilan Creole’. It is spoken by indigenous residents living in Yilan County in Eastern Taiwan. In this paper we first outline the sociohistorical background of Yilan Creole to establish that it is indeed a creole. We then attempt to clarify the linguistic nature of Yilan Creole through an examination of the usage of negation. The results of our analysis indicate that the negative –nay (based on a Standard Japanese form) occurs in expressions of past and present states and actions, while the negative –ng (based on a Western Japanese dialectal form) occurs in expressions of future states and actions. We attribute this usage pattern to the influence of the categories ‘realis’ and ‘irrealis’ in the Atayal language. The negation system of Yilan Creole developed by restructuring the Japanese forms to reflect these Atayal grammatical categories.