SAWAIORI MATERIAL IN INDONESIA. 171 



it forms for the erection of a Malayo-Polynesian family. In the 

 Malay itself, the speech of which we have the longest record and 

 the fullest comprehension, there are but 75 vocables safely identified 

 as common in these data to the two families. Making the most gen- 

 erous allowance, a lavish allowance, for the vocables which evaded 

 compilation under the conditions of this research, we can only thus 

 doubtfully find a community of 150 words. 



We are to consider the source of this petty common vocabulary. 

 In the analysis of the possibilities it may have been borrowed from 

 Indonesia by the Sawaiori during their joint occupancy of that area ; 

 it may have been delivered to each from a common source. It may 

 have been contributed by the Sawaiori to their Malaysian conquer- 

 ors, by such of the Sawaiori as persisted as inclusions in the Indo- 

 nesian settlement, it being well understood that sooner or later they 

 were absorbed in the alien culture and outside this linguistic record 

 have left no mark, or at best a scarcely measurable trace. 



If the Malay peoples advancing upon the Sawaiori peoples whom 

 they found in possession of the islands of the Indian Archipelago 

 forced their vocables upon the folk whom it was their pleasure and 

 \ to their interest to scatter before them, then we are at an utter loss 

 to comprehend the nature of such intercourse, for it is not in one 

 generation nor yet in three that a people adopts any considerable 

 element of an alien speech. Furthermore, if the Sawaiori borrowed 

 directly from the Indonesian, incomprehensible as such a contin- 

 gency is, we should expect to find the greatest range of variety, the 

 widest divergence from phonetic principles, among the several divi- 

 sions of the borrowing race, the closest uniformity among the lenders. 

 Yet in the case of each of these seventy-five vocables here discussed 

 the Polynesian keeps the word practically without alteration; in Indo- 

 nesia the range of variety is enormous. The nature of the Indonesian 

 variety is plain to see in the phonetic tables heretofore drafted. 



We note three types, and careful study of the tables will show 

 that all variants fall under one or other of these types. 



First : phonetic variation recognizable as a Polynesian type. This 

 may mean that dialectic variation in the Sawaiori material existed 

 at the time when the two races had the word in common, a very 

 possible contingency. It may mean that in the word itself was a 

 disposition or motion toward a certain type of mutation which was 

 carried over with the loan, a contingency almost impossible, for we 

 have yet to learn of an instinct in the word ; the Sprachgeist resides 

 in the speaker. 



Second: incorporation upon the common stem of formative ele- 

 ments distinctively Malaysian. This sort of thing is very common 

 in all speech, markedly characteristic of our own English in its word- 

 pilfering from every source. 



