THE FIRST POLYNESIAN HOME. 27 



came from the Indian Peninsula one might suppose with Bopp that the 

 language was Indo-European; if from the Indo-Chinese Peninsula, with 

 Max Muller that it was Scythian or Turanian. The problem thus, as 

 is clear, can only be solved linguistically; and the praiseworthy efforts 

 of Bopp and Muller to solve it are valuable if only as having led to the 

 certainty that the Oceanic mother tongue was neither Indo-European nor 

 Turanian. Their attempts failed because made on insufficient data, and 

 their methods were for the same reason inadequate * * * 



When we say that Arabia was the motherland of the island family of 

 languages, this does not mean that the primitive Oceanic tongue — of which 

 the multitudinous dialects of Oceania as at present spoken are the analytic 

 or simplified descendants, as English is of Anglo-Saxon, or the Romance 

 dialects of Latin — was derived from the Arabic ; but that Arabia was the 

 motherland of the primitive Oceanic as it is of the Ethiopic, Amharic, and 

 Tigre, and of the Assyrian, Phenician, Hebrew, and Aramaic. If it had 

 more in common with Arabic than with any other Semitic language, that 

 is because Arabic has more than any other preserved the features of the 

 primitive Semitic tongue, the common mother of all of them. The primi- 

 tive Oceanic must be regarded, not as a descendant of, but as a sister to 

 the Arabic, Himyaritic, Ethiopic, Assyrian, Phenician, Hebrew, and Ara- 

 maic and the Efate, Samoan, Malagasy, Malay, etc., as cousins to the Mahri, 

 Amharic, Tigre, Mandaitic, Modern Syriac, and vulgar Arabic dialects, due 

 allowance being made for the fact that these latter have always been 

 more or less under the conserving influence of the surrounding Semitic lit- 

 erature and civilization, from which the island dialects have been for ages 

 completely cut off, as well as completely isolated from each other. 



It should be premised that Dr. Macdonald's argument, loaded with 

 minute details and seldom stating clear principle, is nowhere lucid. 

 The profundity and the breadth of his Semitic erudition will be 

 estimated by each student in proportion as he is fitted to pass crit- 

 ically upon such topics. From the confusion of statement tangled 

 with partial proof involving more statement with yet more proof I 

 have endeavored to present a simple syllabus of his argument : 



A. 



The gist of our author's chapter on Oceanic phonology, a plexus 

 of multitudinous detail, is this : 



i. Letters interchange freely within their own vertical series. 



2. Letters interchange freely as between series and series. 



3. Letters conveniently efface themselves, whether initial, medial, 

 or final. 



4. Initial syllables may drop off. 



5. Initial syllables may be added " to lighten the pronunciation." 

 Granting all or most of these postulates, it will be seen that no 



particular limit need be set to philological comparison. For such 

 proof as these positions seem to require the student will have to 

 follow out the intricacies of Dr. Macdonald's argument to such con- 

 viction as he may be able to discover. 



