Seediq consists of three main dialects. Members of each dialect grouprefer to themselves by the name of their dialect, while the Amis people call them "Taroko."
Truku - 20,000 members including non-speakers. The Truku dialect, transcribed 德路固 Délùgù in Chinese.
Toda - 2,500 members including non-speakers.
Tgdaya - 2,500 members including non-speakers.
Phonology
In Seediq there are 19 consonant phonemes and 4 vowel phonemes. Among these, there are two velar fricatives, one voiceless and the other voiced, and a uvular stop. In both labial and alveolar plosive series, voice opposition is contrastive; velar and uvular series, however, only display voiceless sounds. The alveolar affricate has a marginal phonological status and is found in some interjections, loanwords and non-finite verbal forms with the gerund prefix cese-. With the graphemes c and j the practical orthography indicates the palatal allophones of t and d respectively after i and y. The vowels are the following:
Front
Central
Back
Closed
i
u
Mid
e
Open
a
Seediq also has three diphthongs, mainly ay , aw and uy . Seediq syllables have C, CV, or CVC structures, except for some interjections which have CVCC structures. Disyllabic words can take on the following structures:
CVCV, CVCVC
CVCCV, CVCCVC
Vowels in antepenultimate syllables are often /e/. The stressed syllable is usually the penultimate one, and is pronounced with a high pitch. In the Truku dialect stress is on the final syllable resulting in loss of first vowel in CVCCV and CVCCVC structures, for example compare: qduriq > pqdriqun, lqlaqi > lqlqian. In Taroko, up to six onset consonants are possible: CCCCCVC, for example: tn'ghngkawas, mptrqdug, pngkrbkan, dmptbrinah.
Morphology
As other Austronesian languages, Seediq uses reduplication to convey grammatical functions, such as pluralization and reciprocal verb form derivation. There are two kinds of reduplication: one which involves only the first syllable of the stem, with structure Cə-CV, and one which involves the last pair of syllables of the stem excluding codas, having structure CəCə-CVCV. Examples are:
qehuni "tree" → qe-qehuni "trees"
seʼdiq "person" → sede-seʼdiq "people"
Along with reduplication, there are also numerous prefixes and suffixes in Seediq that intervene to alter the meaning of words in derivational and inflectional processes. Affixes include:
Clitics, unlike affixes, do not cause phonological alterations on their roots to which they are attached.
Verbs
Seediq verbs have three types of voices, which are in turn inflected for mood or aspect. Nouns, however, do not inflect for voice.
Agent voice - marked by -em- or its allomorphs me or Ø
Goal voice
Conveyance voice
There are four basic aspect/mood categories:
Neutral - same as non-future/imperfective
Perfect - marked by -en-
Non-finite - bare stem
Hortative - marked by -a
The future is marked by me-, mpe-, mpe-ke-. There are a total of five different verb classes. Other verb forms include causatives, reciprocals, and reflexives. Serial verb constructions are also allowed.
Word classes
Teruku Seediq has 11 word classes. ;Open classes
Nouns
Verbs
Adjectives
;Closed classes
Numerals
Personal pronouns
Deictics
Adverbs
Conjunctives
Prepositions
Interjections
Sentence final particles
Like many other Formosan and Philippine languages, Seediq nouns and verbs behave similarly. Adjectives can be considered as a subcategory of verbs.
Syntax
The word order of Seediq is VOS, where S corresponds to the argument marked with absolutive case. This argument ordinarily occurs clause-finally, but may be followed by a topicalizedergative argument. Like many of its other Austronesian relatives, Seediq contains voice morphemes marked on the verb which indicate which of the verb's arguments is treated as the subject and thus marked with absolutive case. In noun phrases, modifiers follow the head. Unlike Tagalog and many other Philippine languages, there are no linkers connecting the heads and modifiers.
Clauses
There are three types of Seediq clauses :
Interjection clauses
Basic clauses
Existential/possessive clauses
Basic clauses have predicates, subjects, and optionally non-subject arguments and adjuncts. Subjects can be recognized via :
adi - negates noun phrase predicates, future/perfect verb forms
wada - past
na'a - "had better, could have done..."
dima - "already"
hana - "just"
ya'asa - "because"
niqan - existential predicate
ungat - negative existential predicate
Deictics include :
niyi - this, this one
ga/gaga - that, that one
hini - here
hi/hiya - there
ga/gaga hiya - over there
There are a total of six prepositions :
quri - toward, about, in the direction of
pa'ah - from
bitaq - until, up to
saw - like
asaw - because of
mawxay - for the sake of
Stative locatives do not take on any prepositions, but are rather placed directly after the verb without any additional marking.
Predicate extenders
Preverbal elements such as adverbs, demonstratives, and prepositions can be used to extend predicates. Below is a partial list of predicate extenders from Tsukida.
