Review Vol.31 No.1

Since 2000, nearly thirty MA theses and Ph.D. dissertations have been dedicated to the study of Formosan languages1, among which is Wang Shan-shan’s dissertation (2004) on Thao, a moribund language spoken by less than 15 speakers in two villages located near Sun Moon Lake in Nantou County. This dissertation represents one of the few recent works that provides an in-depth study on a Formosan language. It deals with two major topics: (i) the recognition of transitivity and ergativity in Thao (Chap. 2-4), as posited in Starosta (1997, 1999) and subsequent works (Liao 2004, among others), and (ii) a sketch of Thao morpho-syntax (Chap. 5). Documentation on this language comes from two major sources: (i) Blust’s dictionary (2003) and (ii) fieldnotes Wang collected in the field in 2000. The first seems to have offered most of the linguistic basis for the writing of this dissertation.