Reviewed by Elly van Gelderen, Arizona State University

This book provides some background on Tsou, an Austronesian language spoken in Taiwan, and a grammatical sketch before focusing on five temporal markers. Most of the work on Tsou has been published as Ph.D dissertations in English and German whereas Elizabeth Zeitoun’s reference grammar is in Chinese. Chia-jung Pan’s work is, therefore, a welcome addition in making the data more accessible. The examples are also well-glossed and nicely presented.

Ch. 1 starts with a discussion of the various dialects of Northern and Southern Tsou, which comprise the Tsouic family. Tsouic has sometimes been seen as one of the four families of the Austronesian family, though this is controversial. The grammatical sketch in Ch. 2 includes a discussion of the verb-object-subject (VOS) word order and its variants, the Case markers on nominals, the free and bound pronouns, the focus system, negation, and questions. It ends with a brief overview of tense and aspect. If one has never seen a language with agent- and patient-focus, there is a steep learning curve.

In Tsou, as in many Austronesian languages, the focus marker is present in a preverb, as in m-o tmeaphu to oko ta skayu si ino [AF-REA put.AF OBL child OBL cradle NOM mother] ‘Mother put the child into a cradle’. The type of focus marker determines which nominal receives nominative (NOM) Case. If it is an agent-focus marker (AF), the agent is nominative. P (38; 41) shows that the preverb can be omitted in certain sentences and also that Tsou is a mood-prominent language as opposed to Chinese, which is aspect-prominent.

Chs. 3 and 4 address the semantics and syntax of temporal expressions respectively. Words for certain temporal concepts (e.g. the concepts of hour, minute, second, and days of the week) do not occur in Tsou. The markers ne-, ho-, ta, to, and no are used with a noun to distinguish that temporally. With day parts, ne-taseona [NE-morning] is ‘yesterday morning’ and ho-eofna [HO-evening] ‘tomorrow evening’; with seasons, ta, to, and no are used for present, past, and future, respectively. Helpful tables with the various possibilities occur throughout.

Ch. 4 contains a literature review on adverbs and adverbials and a discussion of adverbs in the other Formosan languages, Atayal, Paiwan, and Amis. The temporal markers ta, to, and no are also relevant to spatial and psychological distance when used as Case markers (156–57). They can also be used as complementizers, keeping their tense; for instance, a clause with ho is referring to the future. The categorical status of adverbs is also examined, as is their position in the clause.

In conclusion, there is much of interest in this book. As mentioned, of particular note are the excellent glosses and examples of Tsou.