Pazih also split some Proto-Austronesian phonemes: Due to prejudice faced by the Pazeh, as well as other indigenous groups of Taiwan, Hoklo Taiwanese came to displace Pazeh.
[5][6] The last remaining native speaker of the Pazeh dialect, Pan Jin-yu,[7] died in 2010 at the age of 96.
Consonant clusters are rare and consist only of a nasal plus a homorganic obstruent or the glide element of a diphthong.
[12] Like Bunun, Seediq, Squliq Atayal, Mantauran Rukai, and the Tsouic languages,[17] Pazeh does not distinguish between common nouns and personal names, whereas Saisiyat does (Li 2000).
Pazeh makes ready use of affixes, infixes, suffixes, and circumfixes, as well as reduplication.
Although originally a verb-initial language, Pazeh often uses SVO (verb-medial) sentence constructions due to influence from Chinese.
The number "five" in Pazeh, xasep, is similar to Saisiyat Laseb, Taokas hasap, Babuza nahup, and Hoanya hasip (Li 2006).
[20] The Ilongot language of the Philippines also derives numerals in the same manner as Pazeh does (Blust 2009:273).
[21] Furthermore, numerals can function as both nouns and verbs in all Formosan languages, including Pazeh.