THE DOMINANCE OF TAHITI OVER THE PROVINCE. Ill 



similar metaphor, vegetable or animal is immaterial is oo. " Scien- 

 tifically is this nonsense constructed, for on the principle of suiting the 

 action to the word the whole end and purpose of locution and succeeding 

 action is a variety of lip service in which two are not only hearers of the 

 word but doers also. There can be no doubt that u inclines strongly 

 toward the labial tract. Equally plain is it that i is quite as distinctly 

 placed in the palatal region. The great divergence of the two vowels, 

 the distinction which seems almost unbridgeable, is well illustrated in a 

 word which Austral English has adopted from the Australian aboriginal, 

 the attention call which has the longest range of distinctness, the cooee. 

 Except for the preface of a palatal mute, in effect little more than an 

 appulse, this is but U-i ; it is audible for miles of saltbush plain simply 

 because the two vowels are the most widely sundered of all within the 

 range of the human voice. Yet Tahiti has bridged the gap. Those 

 who acquire French in their maturer years when the hardened voice is 

 less responsive to the ear, may recall that in acquiring the use of U they 

 have had to undergo great difficulties in checking the mutation just at 

 the proper point short of i. If the investigators of speech psychology 

 are ready to inform us of the reasons for this mutation in modern 

 French we may perhaps find a suggestion which will be of benefit in 

 comprehending the more complete mutation in Tahiti. 



If the U-i mutation is hard to comprehend, still greater incompre- 

 hensibility must enshroud the mutation u-ia. It is thoroughly estab- 

 lished in Tahiti at the beginning of our acquaintance with the speech, 

 but it is clearly quite modern, for almost all the words which involve ia 

 are duplicated by U-forms, e. g., tuaio, tiaaio. I am sure that in this 

 mutation we are taken out from phonetics and introduced to an ill-com- 

 prehended speech psychology. The vocabulary of Tahiti has been sub- 

 jected to some violent wrenches on the psychologic side, words have been 

 cast aside because of some tabu affecting speech or for some other reason 

 which we may comprehend less well ; new words have been created arti- 

 ficially to take their place. On this we have an incomplete note by the 

 Bishop of Axieri, yet accurate so far as it goes, entered in his dictionary 

 s. v. pi: 



Prohibition d'un mot consacre" comme nom du roi. Cette coutume a 

 d^figure" la langue tahitienne, par ce qu'il a fallu remplacer les mots prohib^s. 

 Po est devenu rui; mare, hota; vai, pape; hou, api; tu, tia; male, poke. 



With this custom of te pi known to be operative upon the vocabulary, 

 it does not seem violent to regard this u-ia mutation as but an item of 

 the incidence of the same degrading custom applied within the word. 



In the consideration of the consonants of this speech the mere tale of 

 figures shows Tahiti to be better provided than Hawaii to the extent of 

 a single unit. This particular unit is the labial f . It is more specious, 

 however, than it is real ; the Hawaiian can not pronounce this consonant 

 at all; the Tahitian is able to use it, but in many cases where he does 



