Ta'Oi (Ta'Oih, Ta Oi) is a

dialect continuum A dialect continuum or dialect chain is a series of Variety (linguistics), language varieties spoken across some geographical area such that neighboring varieties are Mutual intelligibility, mutually intelligible, but the differences accumulat ...

within the Katuic branch of the Austroasiatic language family, spoken amongst the Ta Oi people in the Salavan and Sekong provinces in

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and the municipality of

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Varieties

Sidwell (2005) lists the following varieties of Ta'Oi, which is a name applied to speakers of various related dialects. *Ta'Oi proper *Ong/Ir/Talan *Chatong is spoken about 50 to 100 km northeast of Sekong. It has been recorded only by Theraphan L-Thongkum. *Kriang (Ngkriang, Ngeq) is spoken by up to 4,000 people living in villages between Tatheng and Sekong, such as Ban Chakamngai. *Kataang (Katang) is a dialect that has been documented by Michel Ferlus, Gerard Diffloth, and other linguists. It is not to be confused with the Bru dialect of Katang.

Phonology

Consonants

* There are also creaky syllable-final segments /mʔ, nʔ, ŋʔ, wʔ, lʔ, jʔ/, however; they are not noted as a distinct series. * /ɟ/ may also be heard as a preglottal sound �jSidwell, Paul (2005). pp. 12-15

Vowels

Morphosyntax

Taoih, like other Katuic languages, is largely analytic and slightly inflectional. Taoih has a large amounts of affixes which mark agreement for person and case and derive new lexicalized words. The specific cases that are marked differ by person. There are several grammatical cases in Taoih, including some important ones: nominative, accusative, locative, dative, and genitive. Taoih is prominently a neutral alignment language. Taoih exhibits neutral alignment for case with (in)transitive verbs and also neutral alignment for agreement in both (in)transitive and ditransitive frames, the verb never shows agreement with any argument, regardless of its transitivity. For ditransitive verbs, Taoih exhibits indirective alignment. To mark benefactive arguments, the dative marker and preposition ''adeh'' occur before patients.

Varieties

Phonology

Consonants

Vowels

Morphosyntax

References

Further reading