Dialectal distinctions in Plngawan Atayal Current state and history.

Plngawan Atayal can be subdivided into two varieties: Sami'uɹ and Macagis. This subdialectal distinction went mostly unnoticed in linguistic publications barring a short mention by Chen (2012). Despite living in the same village since 1938, elderly speakers of both varieties have retained a number of unique phonological features. These features not only allow us to distinguish contemporary varieties, but also let us identify data from older publications. An examination of works by Ferrell (1969) and Li (1981, 1985) has revealed a prevalence of Sami'uɹ data, with a small number of Macagis lexemes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]