Suffi^xes in Oceanic Lamjimge!^. •129 



(h) Meliiiiesiaii New Guinea. (See "Torres Straits' M\pt'ditioii." 

 Vol. TIL, p. 454). 



(1) With )(. (2) Without n. 



Motn - - - ka, ga, hi, va, a 



Kabadi - - - va 



Wedau - - - ra 



Dobu - - iia, ina 



(i) Malay. 

 - an 



NOTES. ETC.. ON TABLES IIL AND IV. 



The two instances of Passives in Melanesia in the languages of 

 Florida and Biigotu have been referred to above under Table ii.. 

 Noun Suffixes. Dr. Codrington states that the a in these two in- 

 stances being attached to the Verb conveys a sense Avhich is Passive. 

 It will be noticed in these two instances that the Suffix a which is 

 used could not be the Suffixed Pronoun since the Pronoun is added 

 to it, and the adding of the Pronoun proves that the Avord sn 

 formed is a Noun, since the Pronouns f)u, mu, na, etc., are at- 

 tached only to Nouns, and in consequence this a must be a Noun 

 Suffix. Its use then in Florida and Bugotu may be compared with 

 the use of the Noun Suffixes la, ta in Sa'a and Ulawa, which also 

 are used with a gerundival force, and we should thus conclude that 

 there is no real example of Passive Suffixes in Melanesia. 



Dr. Codrington ("Mel. Lang.," p. 192). suggests that the 

 Maori Passive may have arisen from an impersonal use of the Verb 

 ^fter the style of the following sentence in Mota; nie taiir veta o 

 Ima built already the hou.*ie, the house is built. There is no pas- 

 sive in Melanesia as such and the nearest approach to it is in such 

 impersonal uses of the Voib. Mr. Ray, " Common Origin of the 

 Oceanic Languages," consideis tliat tlie Passive in Polynesian is 

 built up of the Verbal Suffix and c/, and he considers this d to be 

 the Suffixed Pronoun, but he gives no reason why the Pronoun 

 should be suffixed in the third Person Singular only, nor Avhy this 

 special Melanesian characteristic of suffixing the Pronoun should 

 thus occur in Polynesia. As he says words like pmiif/a and ta\\isi<i 

 in Samoan have a decidedly Melanesian look, but in no Polynesian 

 language is the Personal Pronoun suffixed to the Verb, and this 

 fact alone would seem to vitiate Mr. Ray's theory as to tlie nature 

 of the termination a of the Polynesian Passive. Dr. Codrington 

 is probably correct in his theory of the Passive arising from an 



