468 Transactions. 



Some words, again, will drop out of a language because they 

 become tafu, or at least will lie somewhere at the back of the 

 language, like a person's name when we say we have it at the tip 

 of our tongue ; or old forms may only be preserved in the 

 language spoken by chiefs. At Mota a man may not use words 

 which form part or the whole of the names of his relations by 

 marriage. If a man has a relation named Pantutun he must not 

 use either of the common words panei, hand, or tutun, hot. He 

 uses other words only kept for such occasions, but perhaps 

 survivals of older forms. All such restrictions must be taken 

 into account in explaining the divergence of vocabularies. 



Some words, too, are pretty sure to be merely local terms 

 which have taken the place of the more widely spread form. 

 The Mota qatia, an arrow, is probably one of these. Qatia 

 means " tree-fern," then the arrowhead made of tree-fern wood, 

 then the arrow itself. In the New Hebrides, though qasia means 

 a " tree-fern," the word for " arrow " is quite different — a form 

 of Ufa, a widespread oceanic word. In Raga this is found as 

 lia, and it may occur in Mota in the words liamule and liawora. 



Melanesian languages are very rich in their power of forming 

 adjectives — e.g., by prefixing ma or suffixing ga. For this rea- 

 son adjectives should not generally be compared. Malumlum, 

 the common Mota word for " soft," is perhaps formed from 

 lum, a root, which means moss or seaweed. But another group 

 will be quite as likely to take some other substance as the 

 characteristically soft thing. The Mota word gesagesaga means 

 " bright-blue," and is formed from gegesa, the name of a Trades- 

 cantia with bright-blue flowers, or from gesa, the name of a 

 bright-blue volcanic stone found in the neighbouring island of 

 Vanua Lava, with the adjectival suffix ga. But there is no 

 reason for supposing that the people of the next island will take 

 the tree gegesa or the bluestone gesa to describe all bright-blue 

 objects. A tree in Mota called resa, with flowers striped pink 

 and white, may be the origin of the Mota adjective resa, striped. 

 The Florida word for " red," sisi, is the name of the red Hibiscus.* 

 The Duke of York word for " red " is dara, which is obviously 

 the common Oceanic word for " blood." * The word ngira is 

 the name of a hard-wooded bush in Mota ; in New Georgia the 

 same word means anything hard.* 



In such a poetic race as the Oceanic peoples the general 

 tendency of all languages to use metaphor and then forget that 

 the word was metaphorical will have full play, and some objects, 

 such as a rainbow, a river, or a hurricane, will be expressed by 

 varying metaphors. Thus, a bridge in the language of Wedau, 



* Dr. Codrington, " Melanesian Languages." 



