POLYNESIAN RELICS IN MELANESIA. 143 



ninety languages in Melanesia. Had we dictionaries of each of the 

 ninety we might easily note the exact percentage of words which 

 mark the Polynesian content in each. Then our comparison would 

 be as exact as it would be facile. Unfortunately there remain 

 eighty-seven languages of which our knowledge rests upon a very 

 few words preserved at random in many works of reference. The 

 exact measure we seek is impossible of application. 



Yet we are by no means left without recourse. There is at 

 our hand a certain measure of the quality of the Polynesian inclu- 

 sions in these Melanesian tongues. The identifications have been 

 made with all the assistance which can inhere in long practical 

 acquaintance with the comparative Polynesian philology. I have, 

 accordingly, had no hesitation in definitely accepting as Polynesian 

 identification many a word which would completely fail of recog- 

 nition by the Polynesian of any one tongue. This is due to the fact 

 that the Melanesian, alien to the Sprachgeist of his loan material, may 

 deal with the Polynesian word which has come into his possession 

 according to the spirit of his own speech. Thus the Samoan who 

 says fajanga, to feed, might quite fail of recognizing his mother 

 tongue when the New Irelander had trimmed here and added there 

 to make I v ambell angan; and his familiar longo, to hear, would be 

 wholly inaudible to him in Marina rogotag. Yet there are words 

 which he could comprehend. 



I have therefore taken as criteria of this measurement the words 

 in each Melanesian language which a Samoan, knowing only Samoan, 

 could comprehend if he were set down on the alien shore amid a 

 hostile folk under circumstances where every instinct of life would 

 fill him with anxious desire to know from the strange sounds what 

 disposition was to be made of him. Not the learned pursuits of 

 a philologist this, but the working of the wits of a man under the 

 compelling stress of elemental need. I assume that his ears thus 

 pricked up would gather those words which exist in common in his 

 language and that of his savage hosts, and there are many such, 

 even where the final vowel has undergone abrasion. Further I 

 assume that when the consonant structure of any given word remains 

 the same in the two languages his wits would be sharp enough to 

 recognize the word when the vowels had undergone modification; 

 thus Epi fefene would be easily comprehensible to the Samoan who 

 says fa fine for woman. The same will hold when the vowel structure 

 is constant ; thus Ulawa nimanima could not but be comprehensible 

 to the Samoan who knows his hand as lima. Finally, in those cases 

 where the vowels remain unaltered and the mutation of consonants 

 is not at variance with the system of mutation normal to the Polyne- 

 sian languages, I feel justified in the assumption that the strain of 

 need would awaken our Samoan to a conscious recognition of his 



