PHILOLOGY. 



wkm?, thy canoe tamdm, thy father 



wana, his canoe tamdna, his father 



wara, our canoe tamdra, our father 



wami, your canoe tamami, your father 



za, their canoe (?), or those canoes tamdia, their (?) father 



What distinction, if any, exists in the application of these two classes of pronouns, we 

 could not learn. In some cases they seem to be used indifferently, as, au bdta and 

 batdu, my house. The suffixed pronouns are always used with the prepositions, instead 

 of the objective form of the personal, which would seem to be most correct. Thus ru (or 

 run) of or with me ; rum, of thee ; rura, of or among us ; rumi, of you ; in the third 

 person a different form is used, being the preposition ' (ni), and the personal pronoun, 

 as, run teua, nia, wakaki, nakaki, of him, her, them. 



The demonstrative pronouns are formed by means of the adverbs ai, here, and ari, 

 there, postfixed to the noun, with the article te preceding, as, te bata ai (or te batai), 

 this house ; te bata ari (or te baldri), that house. laid was used by Kirby as a plural 

 form, as, antina tapaia iaia? whose knives are those 1 It may be doubted whether this 

 is correct. 



The interrogative pronouns are antai, who 1 tera, or terdi, what ? amra, amdra, or 

 amdrai, what 1 what for ? era or ira, how many ? jw, which ? Antai, when it precedes 

 a verb, usually takes ia after it, to distinguish it from the prohibitive particle antai, " do 

 not," as, antai ia dirvgia, who beats him 1 antai diri-gia, do not beat him. For exam- 

 ples of the other interrogatives, see the vocabulary. 



There are no relative pronouns, their office being supplied by the construction of the 

 sentence, as, e ya te tapa ko andia eru, where is the knife [that] you received [it] from 

 me? la tia te bata ko Tcatiia, is the house finished [which] you were building [it] ? 



THE VERB. 



There are several particles which serve to distinguish the tenses and moods of the 

 verb, but they are frequently omitted when the sense is clear without them. 



The present has no particular sign, unless the a or e which was frequently heard at 

 the beginning of a sentence may be looked upon as such. But it seems to be in most 

 cases an expletive, or at least a mere sign of a verbal signification, as it is used with the 

 past and future tenses as well as with the present. This same particle, a or e, occurs 

 continually in the sentences as given by the interpreters, in places where no meaning 

 whatever can be affixed to it. It seems to be often introduced for euphony alone, and 

 we are inclined to believe that in many cases it was merely a mispronunciation of the 

 terminal vowel, which, as has been before intimated, is usually very lightly pronounced 

 by the natives, and was frequently suppressed altogether by the foreigners. Thus the 

 phrase, e rok e te omat e muim, a man comes after thee, should probably be, e roko te 

 oamata muimu. 



Tia (which must not be confounded with the pronominal prefix tia, I), means to 

 finish, or to be done with any thing ; with the particle n affixed, it becomes tian, and is 

 then used as a sign of past time, or completed action ; as, weia, sew it ; ia tian weia, 

 I have sewed it, or am done with sewing it. 



