Retrospect and Prospect of Recent Studies on Extinct Pepo Languages

About 15 years ago, I gave an informal speech on Pepo studies at the Center of Taiwan History Field Research, which was later published as Tsuchida (1992). Since then, a large number of remarkable studies on Pepo languages have been achieved by various scholars and researchers. Today I will report briefly about the significant progress in recent years. Thao, Kavalan, and Pazeh used to be classified under Pepo. We usually understand by the name Pepo that they are heavily and severely sinicized so much that their languages are not spoken any more. Actually, however, at least Thao and Kavalan are still actively spoken. Therefore I will treat only Pazeh here.