112 EASTER ISLAND. 



sometimes employ the sound he possesses a duplicate word in h which is 

 far more commonly in use. 



The emptiness of the palatal column in the foregoing table of the 

 Tahitian alphabet will show that despite the specious numerical supe- 

 riority of Tahiti it has undergone a phonetic degradation which entails 

 the same result as the atrophy of one of the three speech organs. In 

 Tahiti the palate is not once used in speech. I am well aware that the 

 k of the Hawaiian is a pseudomorph, the product of a mutation of t 

 backward in the mouth to the immediate orifice of the throat. To a 

 certain extent this is artificial, for we know that at the time of the dis- 

 covery by Cook even a generation later, at the period when the Boston 

 missionaries reduced the speech to writing Hawaiian had both t in its 

 original value and the k as a t-pseudomorph. For reasons which were 

 undoubtedly good to them the missionaries after a time rejected the 

 true t and by adopting the k in its room hastened the process which we 

 have reason to believe must have been inevitable even without the 

 interference. 



We have clear evidence of the inevitableness of this remarkable and 

 really violent mutation in the modern phase of Samoan. It was reduced 

 to writing a score of years later than the Hawaiian. At that time it 

 also had lost the true Proto-Samoan k, perhaps more recently than had 

 been the case in the Hawaiian, for it is represented by a gap in the word 

 which we represent by the character * . The t, however, was everywhere 

 in use. Since the reduction of Samoan to a written norm, despite the 

 fact that no civilized land has anything like the low percentage of illiter- 

 ates due to the compulsory system of elementary education, spoken 

 Samoan alters every t into k except only in the most formal speech of 

 chiefs and in the sermons of village pastors, who none the less practice 

 the kappation on the six secular days. 



For the purpose of this phonetic study it is immaterial whether the 

 Hawaiian k is the true palatal mute or a pseudomorph upon the lingual 

 mute; however that may be, the Hawaiian, after a period in which his 

 palate was in speech-idleness, has returned to its employment. The 

 Tahitian is yet in the position where he speaks with but two speech 

 organs. This is not arrested development. Back of this idle palate 

 we readily discover the Proto-Samoan parent vocables in which both 

 palatals are in use. Back of this again we have the life-history of this 

 speech family in which I have been able to present distinct proof that 

 the palatal was the first of the speech organs to be brought under 

 control by man in the evolution of speech. 



Tahiti in its other deviations from the Proto-Samoan norm shows 

 many instances of degradation, but none is so startling as this complete 

 disuse of the first-acquired organ of human speech. It is a speech in 

 decrepitude, and the u-mutation is another evidence of senility. Not 

 in itself does this argue a hopeless case. We have seen in Hawaii and 



