THE OCEANIC FAMILY OF LANGUAGES. 819 
Malagasy kintana and vasiana, in Aneityum moryeur, in Efatese 
masoet and ngmahe. In Malay nipis, tipis, mipis, ‘thin,’ there is 
the interchange of m and ¢, and n and m ; while in ais pukul, 
‘strike,’ kilat, kilap, ‘lightning,’ is that of ¢ and p. (Marsden, 
Malay Gram., p. 113.) In Malagasy, when a formative suffix is 
attached to words having the formative ending -ka, -na or -tra, 
the & is changed to h or f the tr tot, 7, or f, and the n often to 
m. (Parker, The Malagasy Language, p. 19.) The importance 
of this to the explanation of certain universal facts in Oceanic 
will appear below. The interchange of labial and guttural is seen 
in Malay in gawa or bawa ‘to carry, in Efatese bui and kui 
‘back,’ mafis and makus ‘knife, Malay piso, Malagasy dialect 
kiso ‘knife.’ Dr. Codrington has remarked that in the letter- 
changes which do occur in the Melanesian it is generally impossible 
to find alaw. (Work cited, p. 201.) Prof. M. Miiller, after 
comparing Sanscrit gharma, ‘heat, with Greek thermos, Latin 
jormus, says he is strongly inclined to ascribe the phonetic 
diversity which we observe between Sanscrit, Greek, and Latin 
to a previous state of language, in which, as in the Polynesian 
dialects, the two or three points of consonantal contact were not 
yet felt as definitely separated from each other. . . . No 
letter ever becomes. People pronounce letters, and they either 
pronounce them properly or improperly. (Science of Language, 
ii, p. 180-1). 
THE NUMERALS (PHONOLOGY, STRUCTURE, ORIGIN). 
In the Semitic languages the abstract or feminine of the 
numerals 3-10 was formed, as in other nouns, by the formative 
suffix ¢, or th (pronounced now by some Arabs to), which often 
became either a guttural f or elided. This feminine form of these 
numerals was used with masculine nouns, and has become in 
Modern dialects almost the sole form used and of common gender, 
and it is, therefore, the form to be expected, and which is found 
in Oceanic. This ending is unmistakably seen in the numerals 4 
and 5, with which we begin, only premising that the nouns of the 
Oceanic languages and dialects of the four groups to which the 
following words belong, here omitted for the sake of brevity and 
clearness, may be found given in my paper in the Journal of the 
Polynesian Society, last quarter of 1896, pp. 215-222. 
Four. 
Arabic, wrbah‘at ; modern, arbaat ; modern Ethiopic dialects, 
arut, ubah ; Oceanic, ampat, mbit, evats, ebits, efatra, efats, efutcha, 
apat, hipat, vare, vas, vitu, vier, baté, vavu, fiak, opak, emin, pali, 
Jal, awang, kaar, tar, tas, tiak, thaté, thack, hak, hani, the ¢ elided ; 
Ja, wha, a in all the others is represented by this final consonant. 
Malagasy efatra is efara in hefarana, Xe. 
