The Languages of the Paeifie. 25 



think, at least thirty per cent of such, but this is no proof of any 

 ahen infiltration, but only of mitrrations from the sinking fatherland 

 Hawaiki, to the group, separated by so long intervals of time as to 

 allow of the disuse of one set of words in the mother tongue and the 

 loss of aui^ther set in the new land. For they have all the same 

 phonology, figurative application and transparency of composition 

 that distinguish all the Polynesian dialects. 



The languages of Melanesia and coastal Papua, away to the west 

 of Polynesia, have only a small percentage of their vocabularies in 

 any way to be identified with Polynesian words, and as a rule these 

 are greatly mutilated and often difiicult to recognize. I gave some 

 few words in my previous lecture, which going right through to the 

 Malay archipelago yet found their derivation only in Polynesian; 

 as e. g. bia or pia the sago tree, but in Polynesian "exudation" from 

 pi which is used in that language in the sense of " to exude." I will 

 add one more; the Polynesian wahinc, a woman, comes from zva^^ 

 "set apart" and hine. "a girl," but it goes away west into Indonesia 

 in many dififerent forms as e. g. fafeii, vaiiie, aiiie. babiiieh. I could 

 easily give scores of others. I doubt greatly if the implication in the 

 term "Malayo-Polynesian" that these languages are all akin is 

 correct. For though they are to some extent grammarless like 

 Polynesian, they have much more formal grammar than Polynesian. 

 In the Melanesian and coastal Papuan and to a small extent in the 

 Micronesian and Indonesian languages there is a shorter form of the 

 personal pronoun used as an afiix to the noun. These are so much 

 more primitive in their linguistic and intellectual development that 

 they cannot think of a thing but as belonging to some personality ; 

 it is always mine or yours or his. The Polynesians have no mental 

 primitiveness of this kind, they can think of a thing in itself and 

 apart from its possession by a person. So in the Polynesian dialects 

 (chiefly in Hawaiian) there is only a trace of a grammatical habit 

 that is found largely in the Indonesian languages and is almo.st 

 universal in the languages between Polynesia and the Malay archi- 

 pelago. They cannot use the numerals except with classifying 

 particles ; flat things have one special particle to themselves when 

 being counted, and round things another aixl so on. A third 

 characteristic of those languages to the west is the use of an infix, 

 i. e. the insertion of a significant syllable right into the heart of a 



[13]' 



