This book is a result of the authors’ many years of collaboration, beginning in 1994 when we led a team of Providence graduate students to conduct a sociolinguistic survey of Yami on Orchid Island, generously supported by an NSC grant (NSC 84-2411-H-126-001). We were welcomed by local Yami Christians into their communities as we celebrated with them in the dedication of the newly translated Yami New Testament.

After Rau’s initial trip to Dong’s home Island, we began developing teaching materials (Dong & Rau 2000) for college level second language learners. We collected texts and word lists for projects supported by the Council of the Aboriginal Affairs (1998-2000), in preparation for a future dictionary, followed by several studies supported by the NSC projects on the linguistic structures of Yami (NSC89-2411-H-126-015, NSC90-2411-H-126-015, NSC91-2411-H-126-013-MD, NSC93-2411-H-126-013).

In 2002, in response to the need to digitize Austronesian language texts, Dr. Elizabeth Zeitoun of Academia Sinica invited us to prepare our Yami texts in conformity with the standardized interlinear translation format in both Chinese and English, to facilitate future incorporation of our texts into the developing on-line corpora. We accepted the call and recruited Mr. Daniel E. Rau and Dr. Gerald A. Rau to translate and edit fifty Yami texts (with Chinese translation) into English during their winter breaks. From this corpus we selected twenty texts to work out the detailed morpheme-by-morpheme glossary in both Chinese and English, forming the foundation of this book.

At the end of the same year, the authors were invited to give a workshop on Yami Morphosyntax to a group of Yami language teachers on Orchid Island. In response to the teachers’ call for better training materials, the authors completed a draft of the Chinese version of the Reference Grammar, which was later revised for inclusion in this book. The English version of the grammar was translated and rewritten by the first author during the year (2003-2004) she spent at the University of Minnesota as a Visiting Scholar. The work was dedicated to her advisor, Prof. John Wolff, on his retirement from Cornell University.

With the skillful assistance of Ms. Ann Chang and Ms. Lilianne Chen, then linguistics graduate students at Providence University, we made the vocabulary for this book, using the Shoebox software to generate all the lexical entries and most of the examples from the twenty texts. We then revised or constructed suitable examples to illustrate each lexical entry. Mr. Daniel E. Rau once again volunteered his time to help us translate all the Yami examples from the Chinese translation into English. We used the Oxford Concordance Program (OCP) software to produce a printout as the basis of the index. Readers can use the index two different ways, starting from English, or Chinese Pinyin, all listed in English alphabetical order.

The focus of this book is undoubtedly the twenty Yami texts, which are placed strategically in the center of this book, introduced by a reference grammar written in Chinese and English and followed by a vocabulary and a two-way index based on the texts exclusively, to symbolize the centrality of texts for linguistic analysis. All the information is presented in Chinese and English, allowing Yami language teachers and learners who may not be proficient in English and Austronesian linguists who may not be proficient in Chinese to have easy access to the materials presented in this book. To assist the reader, we have also included an Appendix containing 364 of the most commonly used Yami words, adapted from the word list provided in Philippine Minor Languages: Word Lists and Phonologies, edited by Lawrence A. Reid (1971, University of Hawaii Press). In the Chinese title and text we have chosen to use the term ‘Tao’ to refer to this language, in accordance with the preferred self-reference of the younger generation on Orchid Island. For the English title and text we retain the use of the term ‘Yami’ commonly used in English scholarship.

Finally, we would like to acknowledge Prof. Paul J.-K. Li’s advice and encouragement during the time we were collecting Yami texts and word lists, Prof. Dah-an Ho for his invitation to have our book published by the Journal of Language and Linguistics, and the two anonymous reviewers’ comments and suggestions. We took our reviewers’ opinions very seriously in the revision. All remaining errors are ours.This work is dedicated to Prof. Paul J.-K. Li in celebration of his 70th birthday in September 2006.

D. Victoria Rau & Maa-Neu Dong
June 2005