This book is to go with the analysis given in Rukai Structure appeared as a special publication of the Institute of History and Philology, Academia Sinica but presents far more data and complex structures than were handled in the previous publication. A third volume, Rukai Dictionary is in preparation and will appear hopefully in the near future.

These texts were collected in T'aitung, Taiwan, --in the village of Tanan. The Rukai tribe there is known as Taromak. They were collected off and on during the periods: July 16–August 14, September 24–October 24, and December 15–26, 1970, March 5–18, April 27–May 16, and August 17–23, 1971 by investigator. All the texts are presented in the chronological order as they were originally collected. Except for the first text, all were taped, interpreted and transcribed in the field. The final check-up of the texts was made with the assistance of my main informant Te?tz'u Lin in the village March 21–28, 1975. We went over all the texts and made all the necessary corrections together. Mr. Lin had put in an enormous amount of time and effort in revising these texts. He deserves our greatest gratitude.

The footnotes after each text are miscellaneous: they give references to the analyses in Rukai Structure, provide further examples to illustrate the usage of a particular lexical item, comparison of various forms of the same stem in different syntactic structures, derivation, synonyms, pronunciation, underlying phonemic representations, unsettled problems, etc. The notes are somewhat repetitive, particularly those on affixes and derivation.

The texts are given in structural (“taxonomic” in Chomsky’s term) phonemic transcription, not the systematic phonemic transcription as the sentence examples given in Rukai Structure. There is always a problem of how abstract phonology can be. A transcription with more phonetic realities will leave more room for new interpretations. In the texts the vowel o is used instead of u. Vowel length is indicated by the symbol: e.g., i:, a:, ?: and o: rather than ii, aa, ?? and uu as in Rukai Structure. Echo vowels are not represented in the transcription except those that become semiconsonants w and ? when followed by the suffix –ini. The semiconsonants y and w are used instead of i and o when followed by vowels. Much to our regret, the transcription has not been .completely regularized in these respects: (1) word boundary, (2) long vs. short vowels, and (3) the vowels i and o vs. the semiconsonants y and w respectively.

In addition to the eight phonological rules presented in Rukai Structure, p.63, at least one such rule can be added: If a lexical item is in the canonical form CVCVCV (C)(V)(C), the second vowel is generally deleted in rapid or even normal speech, e.g., /r?t?san/ > [r?tsa] ‘relative,’ /lar?t?san/ > [lart?sa] ‘relatives’ (see Text II, Note 20), /?asodaLo/ > [?asdaLo] ‘to invite.’ Rukai has been a little better understood since the publication of Rukai Structure two years ago. The following are noticeable:

(1) When the short personal pronouns do occur before the verb stem, they have different meanings from that when they follow the verb stem as they would normally do. Cf. Labwabwal-so ‘are you running?’ vs. so Labwabwal ‘why are you running?’ wakan?－ta ‘we ate’ vs. ta kan? ‘let s eat’ davac-ako ‘I leave’ vs. naw davac ‘I must leave’ (note the difference in the first personal pronouns in different positions).

(2) The ma- form is stative all right, but the ka- form is not necessarily inchoative (see Li 1973, §5.1.1). Actually the ka- form is the active form from which many other verbs may be derived. This is particularly revealing when compared with the m- ~ ?- alternation, e.g., mikakoa ~ ?ikakoa ‘how’ in which the ?- form is the active.

(3) The tense markers wa-, -a-, and a- indicate not only the ‘past’ tense, but also the ‘actual present.’ The three way distinction (present-past-future) in tense is not very well justified. Perhaps the dichotomy between ‘future’ vs. ‘non-future’ can better account for the tense system of Rukai.

All the Rukai forms are underlined, and given both word-by?word translation and free translation in English. The word-by?word translation is generally brief, incomplete, and mostly only for content words. In the free translation the English words that are necessary in the translation but have no counterpart in the original text are put in parentheses.

Texts I–XXVI record the natural daily spoken language of Taromak, the Tanan dialect of Rukai. Appendix I records four songs of the Budai dialect of Rukai with notes. Appendices II–IV list the important grammatical forms for reference to the Texts. Appendix V is the sound system of Rukai. The last three appendices are taken from Rukai Structure with slight modifications.

These texts may be of interest not only to linguists but also to ethnologists. Many Rukai ‘myths and traditions’ are recorded for the first time in this volume, although different versions of Texts IV, VIII, XI and XXI with Japanese translation are available in Ogawa and Asai (1935).

I am grateful to the Institute of History and Philo1ogy, Academia Sinica, for sponsoring the Formosan Project, to China Council on Sino-American Cooperation in Humanities and social Sciences for subsidy and field expenses, and to the National Science council for a grant to publish these texts.

I wish to thank Professors Fang-Kuei Li, Chi Li, Yih-yuan Li, Pang-hsin Ting, and Stanley Starosta for initiating the research work on the native Formosan language. Thanks are naturally also due to the kind people in the Tanan village, especially Te-tz'u Lin and Fu-shou Wang, who gave generously of their time and assistance in various ways in the collection of all these texts.

Miss·Hsiu-yun Ch’en not only painstakingly typed up the final copy of the texts, but also detected some errors in the earlier manuscripts. My wife Louise Hsin-ling Wang did the proof?reading for both the previous publication Rukai Structure and the present one. Our poor son Hsia-hsin had to stay away with his grandparents when we were busy with these texts.

Paul Jen-kuei Li
Taipei, Taiwan
June 1975