POLYNESIAN GRAMMAR. 271 



as a part of the word, nor yet wholly separate, but merely divided from it by a very thin 

 " space," as in the sentence, i he kukai kotaalx' kno fanaui eke ijahi fefmc, among all 

 the men [who] have been born of women, &c. ; here the missionaries consider the e 

 before lie as a sign of the nominative, and translate, " among all whom women have 

 borne;" it is, however, unquestionably the preposition by, and the i which follows fanau 

 is a particle of the passive ; the proper rendering, therefore, is, " among all brought 

 forth by women." This mistake has arisen partly from the circumstance that the only 

 other Oceanic dialect with which the missionaries at this group were acquainted was the 

 Vitian, which has no proper passive, and which employs several particles as affixes to 

 the verb to denote its transitive state, and partly from the fact that the Tongan appears 

 to be in reality undecided on this point, or rather, to employ the same construction to 

 express the two relations, easily confounded, of an active verb to its objective, and a 

 passive to its nominative. Thus, in the phrase, kabau e kabuti e Setani a Setani, " if 

 Satan cast out Satan," e Setani is evidently in the ablative, and kabuti (properly kabutia) 

 in the passive, from kabu, and the sentence reads " if Satan be cast out by Satan ;" 

 yet a few lines after we have the same form used apparently in an active sense, kabau 

 ten kabuti ai ydhi tevolo, " if I cast out devils," where the u of teu is the nominative pro- 

 noun /. This is the Vitian construction, as will be seen by referring to the grammar of 

 that language. In some cases, however, the passive acceptation has been so clear that 

 the translators could not remain in doubt, as lie te ke tanuhia i hoo lea, be te ke ttalaia 

 i hoo lea, for thou shall be justified by thy words, and thou shall be condemned by thy 

 words ; the preposition by is here rendered i (according to the general rule in the Poly- 

 nesian), and not e, the ablative being not that of the agent, but that of the means or 

 instrument. The particles thus far observed in the Tongan are i (for ia), ia, hia, ki (for 

 kia), ti (for tia}, and no, (perhaps for ina) as e akonakina akinautolu e he Otua, 

 " they shall be taught by God" (from akonaki, to teach). 



In the New Zealand dialect the particles are more numerous than in the rest, and in 

 this point its grammalical system appears to be more complete and regular than lhat of 

 the others. It is to be observed that not only is the passive, as such, used much more 

 frequently than in English, but in the imperative of transilive verbs, the passive form is 

 generally employed where it must be rendered into English by the active, and this is 

 also sometimes the case in other moods. Ki te men e wakamahayatia ana koe e tou 

 kanohi matau, if thy right eye offend thee, lit., if thou be offended by thy right eye ; 

 maliara-tia ya reyareya, observe the lilies. One remarkable peculiarity of this dialect 

 is that instead of the passive sign being separated from the verb by an adverb, as in the 

 other dialects, both the verb and the adverb have the affix, that of the latter being 

 always tia, as ka tuku-a marie-tia tou ponoya, thy servant is let go in peace (tuku, to 

 let go ; marie, peacefully) ; korero-tia kino-tia, evil spoken of. The passive suffixes 

 are a, ia, hia, kia, mia, yia, ria, tia, na, ya, ina, and kina; as tono-a, sent, wati-ia, 

 broken, tayo-hia, taken, wetc-kia, loosed, aru-mia, followed, wakatu-ria, placed, 

 taumau-tia, betrothed, tahu-na, burnt, wayai-ya, fed, hua-ina, called, tua-kina, 

 cut down. There appears to be no certain rule by which we can determine what is the 

 affix of a particular verb ; on this point usage is the only guide. It would seem, how- 

 ever, that certain terminations are best adapted, according to the euphony of the lan- 

 guage, to particular affixes. Verbs ending in ae, alee, ei, eri, iri, oi, oti, ui, uri, uti, 

 uku, uru, utu, have usually a; those which terminate in aki and ati, have often ia; 



