This conference paper handout discusses the problems that the author had analyzing the Death Ritual texts from a grammatical point of view as it pertains to historical grammar and phonology. Working from a recorded version of the Death Ritual done by the author. She describes the rhythmic patterns found in the sentences, as well as the environments of filler syllables, negation, types of nouns, and prefixes. Approximately 40 Akha sentences with word-to-word-glossing and free translation are found in the article. Presented at the 20th International Conference on Sino-Tibetan Languages and Linguistics (ICSTLL) in 1987, pp. 155-167, and then published in Linguistics of the Tibeto-Burman Area in 1991 [ahk-publ-044.pdf]. This is the OCR version where words can be selected. Additionally, this file contains an eight-page section, "Akha Death Ritual Text: Chapter 2", which the published version does not have.