24 EASTER ISLAND. 



but we have shown that in most of these languages the tongue control 

 has not yet reached a degree of discipline which will give the true 

 sound, the sibilant passes into the aspiration, a breathing but faintly 

 colored by any activity of the tongue at all. 



Next, and last in this examination of the Proto-Samoan consonants, 

 we come to the labials. In considering the nasal series mention was 

 made of the fixity of the m value. So far as we may rest an argument 

 upon freedom from mutation as evidential of antiquity of acquisition, 

 we feel abundantly justified in the belief that the line of severance of 

 speaking man from crying animal came when man acquired the labial 

 m. The first gift of dawning speech lies exactly in the last gift of 

 rational speech, the ability to shut the mouth. As between the fixed 

 labial and the imperfectly positioned palatal the labial is surely the 

 older. Here our interested delving into the beginnings gives us a 

 sketch of emerging man : first he can mumble and then he can grunt, 

 but he has begun. 



When we look at the other extremity of the column we find the surd 

 mute well established. In Viti it is represented by its sonant, but 

 only through the support of the nasal of its own series, mb; in a few 

 instances in this language it passes to the sonant spirant v. In Tonga p 

 becomes b without support, and this mutation is found somewhat rarely 

 in some other languages. 



The intermediate closure through the agency of the lips gives the 

 spirants, both surd and sonant. It is easy to see why we can have this 

 double effect from a single position which has been found impracticable 

 in these languages when the palate and the tongue have been the 

 effective organs. For any given closure it is theoretically possible to 

 have two effects. If there is no vibration of the air column during the 

 continuance of the closure we have the surd or silent consonant ; but if 

 during the brief space of the continuance of the closure the lungs force 

 into the buccal cavity a supply of air and this is set into vibration before 

 the closure is unbarred we have a sounding or sonant result of the clos- 

 ure. Thus in the case of these labial spirants, in saying fa the sound 

 does not begin until the moment of release of the closure ; in saying va 

 it becomes evident in the moment before such release. We may find 

 a reason. In the case of the lingual and the palatal the space in which 

 vibration before release might take place is occupied by organs under 

 less perfect control. In the case of the labials the palate and the tongue 

 lie quiescent, the whole cavity of the mouth is available as a vibrating 

 chamber, and the thin and essentially external lips are in no sense in the 

 way of such vibration. 



All the languages of Nuclear Polynesia maintain this duality of the 

 spirant. In the Tongafiti household the surd tends to vanish, it is fre- 

 quently transformed into the aspiration, and in Rarotonga that breath- 

 ing has proved too feeble to endure, while the Maori can come no closer 



