l6 '/'//(' lAin_i:;iiao;cs of fhc Pacific. 



its indcpendctu-e and be separated from its verb. ( )f the inflectional 

 t\'pe the best instances are fonnd in the Indi i-b.nn ijjcan tongues. 

 Latin is hiL^hh inllectional, (.reek still more .so, and vSanskrit most 

 of all. in Tolynesirm the inflections of the dual and i)lnral pers<inal 

 prononns still rex'eal their origin; the dnal ol the first jverson is 

 iiKiiiii or kaiKi. of the third /(///(/.- here the adilition of //(/ is evidently 

 for the numeral liui; the plural of the first i> uuiknu or kakoii and 

 of the third hihoii: this ai;'ain shows its origin in kohi, three. 

 These inflections for the plural were manifestly formed at a most 

 primitive linguistic stage when the ancestral speakers of Polynesian 

 did not count beyond three ; one and two were delinite, three was 

 all beyond, the indefinite. This must have been before they launched 

 out into the Pacific, for there ior the first time they counted up to 

 five ; //;/;(/ for five is practically imiversal in the so-called Malayo- 

 Polynesian languages: but they had been able to count up to four 

 before they left the sphere of influence of the Indo-European 

 languages. "(3ne" varies most of all the numerals. IV)lynesian 

 rua for two is the Latin duo, English t-Zi'o ; for the sound-law that 

 makes / or r and (/ interchangeable existed as strongly in early 

 Indo-European as it does in Polynesian and Malay. Latin lacr\um. 

 Old Latin dakniiiia. is Greek dakni, Gothic tai^^ra. .\nglo-Saxon 

 tcai^^or. tear. Polynesian torn or foli( is the uncontracted form of 

 Latin trcs, German drei. English three; whilst Polynesian wha, 

 four, is Latin quatuor. Sanskrit catvar, Anglo-Saxon fcoTcr. There 

 is no trace of "five" in Polynesian or of lima as a numeral in any 

 Indo-European tongue. Yet the Polynesian must have retained 

 some consciousness of the old European for one. (Latin junis. Old 

 Latin oiiios), for in counting on the second hand, six is ono, i. e., 

 number one of the second hand. JJ'hitii for "seven" retains a 

 trace of "septem" (from sa-pita). It is probably a modification of 

 "u'hiti," to cross over, Hawaiian Itiki, to come, to rise, just as "trcs" 

 is from "tara" to cross over. The Polynesian forms for eight 

 (warn) and nitie diva) belong to that by no means uncommon 

 method of counting from the highest number counted downwards 

 by subtraction ; thus e. g. the inimbers between five and ten in Yap 

 are ten minus one, two, etc., which may be compared with the 

 Roman numeration IV, IX, XL, XC. Malay also expresses 99, 98, 

 97, etc., by "hundred minus i, 2, 3, etc." IVa is a common Poly- 



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