Liberia "^ 



employing speech, its use of these suffixes recalls very closely 

 the Bantu concord.' In fact, in studying these very diverse 

 West African languages, one comes to the conclusion that 

 grammatical structure may vary greatly, while fundamental 

 relationships in word-roots remain. A conquering race may 

 more readily impose on the people it enslaves its own ideas 

 about syntax and arrangement of words and particles than it 

 can eradicate from the minds of the subject people the attach- 

 ment to certain vocables expressive of familiar and common 

 ideas. Thus, there might even be an agreement between Fula, 

 Bulom, Wolof, Mandingo, Temne, and Kpwesi in certain word- 

 roots or numerals while the grammatical structure employed in 

 connecting and building-up these radicals differed very widely ; 

 just as in the Keltic tongues of Britain and Ireland the 

 vocabulary is mainly Aryan while the structure of the language 

 is more of an Iberian — North African — type. In this last 

 instance the discrepancy arises no doubt from the early Aryan 



' It might be of use at this stage to give some idea as to what is meant by 

 the term " concord.'' In the purer forms of Bantu, such as Uru-nyoro of North- 

 west Uganda, it is something like this : 



//v- toke nifi - kyo - ki- kunda /('/-gvva ; tu kt dya. 

 It banana I which it like it falls ; we it eat. 

 (The banana which I like has fallen ; let us eat it.) 

 Tlftoughout this sentence, which is thoroughly characteristic of Bantu construction 

 in its typical form, the word "banana" {Ikitoke) is of the root -take, to which, 

 in the special sense of an individual fruit, the pronominal prefix Iki is applied. 

 This word Ikitoke must be accompanied throughout the sentence by its correspond- 

 ing particle, ki or iki (relative form kyo). In the Temne language of Sierra Leone, 

 a very representative example of the Western Pronominal-prefix group, there is 

 almost exactly the same " concord." This sentence in Temne will illustrate the 

 point : 



Aii na-m\ a - set ^a fumpo (My house falls). 

 The the my the house it falls. 

 E- ye-mi e- set ye- fumpo (My houses fall). 

 The the my the houses they fall. 

 Here afla (shortened sometimes to a- or -Aa) stands for the definite article and 

 pronominal prefix of " house " {sei) in the singular. In the plural the similar prefix 

 is Eye, shortened to E- and -ye. 



1092 



