388 CARNEGIE INSTITUTION OF WASHINGTON. 



PHILOLOGY. 



Churchill, William, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Research associate in primi- 

 tive 'philology. 



In submitting this report upon activities under the grant for research 

 in primitive philology it has seemed advisable to review the preliminary 

 employment of the material upon which the present investigation is 

 based, to note summarily the results which have been attained, to 

 prepare the way for the forecast of the objects now within view. 



The material available comprises a large mass of stories, poems, 

 genealogies, and the like, literary material from Samoa, all collected 

 by myself at different periods from the lips of the most wise elders 

 of that people. In translating this material from the Samoan into 

 Enghsli I found mj^self beset by the obstacle that no satisfactory 

 dictionary of the Samoan language was in existence. To overcome this 

 difficulty I set about the preparation of such a dictionary and made a 

 beginning b}' a collation of the Samoan Scriptures, which now exists 

 on index cards to the number of some hundred thousand. In the course 

 of this work it became evident that a dictionary could not be written 

 until the grammar of the language had been studied out, a theme which 

 had not suggested itself to the missionaries to whose endeavors we owe 

 such scanty material as to the language as is available. 



In the study of the grammar of the Sarnoan, regarded as central in 

 all the languages of Polj^nesia, it was soon found that the study of 

 the sj^ntax depended upon the more elementary study of the con- 

 struction of the words employed in Polynesian speech. I refrained 

 for many years from publishing the conclusions to which I was led, for 

 I soon found that I was running counter to conclusions already pro- 

 nounced by distinguished leaders in ever}^ school of philology. At the 

 outset I found it necessary to revise the classification of these languages 

 and to overthrow the Malay o-Polynesian speech family erected upon 

 insufficient material by Bopp. In the next place it was found to be 

 impossible to interpret these languages as agglutinative, and for that 

 reason I was obliged to devote considerable attention to the estab- 

 lishment of the speech of this Pacific area and of immediately proxi- 

 mate islands as among the languages of isolation. 



The earliest period of my production concerning these points is 

 represented by contributions to transactions of learned societies and 

 other scientific media of publication. Of these I note the following: 



Principles of Samoan Word Composition. (Journal of the Polynesian Society, vol. xiv, 



1905.) 

 Duplication Mechanics in Samoan and their Functional Values. (American Journal of 



PhiloloRjr, vol. XXIX, 34.) 

 Duplication by Dissimilation. (American Journal of Philology, vol. xxx, 171.) 

 Samoan Phonetics in the Broader Relation. (Journal of the Polynesian Society, vol. xvii, 



79.) 

 Root Reducibility in Polynesian. (American Journal of Philology, vol. xni, 369.) 



