RAPANUI SOURCES AND VARIETY. 37 



We have already, in the preceding chapter, presented a table of the 

 alphabet of Rapanui in comparison with the adopted standard of the 

 Proto-Samoan. We shall next list the occurrences of the Rapanui 

 deviations from the standard, and in the first set of tables shall concern 

 ourselves only with the cases for which we have Samoan or in a few 

 instances lacking Samoan we have other Nuclear Polynesian primi- 

 tives as the base of comparison. These tables deal only with deviations ; 

 the concords are so many and so consistent that the index table serves 

 as a most satisfactory tabulation. I make but one exception, in each 

 direction, to this system ; the mutation l-r holds so constantly as not to 

 call for record, and the h in Rapanui, as a preservation of the Proto- 

 Samoan aspiration, needs record because that sound does not appear in 

 the modern Samoan. The tables are grouped by series, that is, by the 

 three speech-organs employed, beginning at the back of the mouth. 



Of the two strongly characteristic deviations of Rapanui from the 

 Proto-Samoan standard, s-h and fh, each affecting an intermediate 

 closure, of the tongue and lips respectively, each results in an aspira- 

 tion, but with a difference in quality whose existence we must recognize, 

 even though we can not fully comprehend it as within our own speech 

 training. 



In the nasal tier the interchanges g-n and n-g are general and not to 

 be regarded as of diagnostic value in determination of dialect movement. 



The minor movements of mutation in the palatal column, the extinc- 

 tion of g and of k, are frequent in Polynesian. That of k has already 

 received sufficient comment, that of g is a dialectic character of Tahiti, 

 and is found sporadically in Nuclear Polynesian and in the Maori. 



