300 LANGUAGE OF NEW ZEALAND. [PART II. 



strengthens the root, as in Italian, and forms a su- 

 perlative. The root is a sort of infinitive, and is 

 inflexible, including indifferently the senses of noun, 

 adjective, adverb, participle, or verb. Flexion is 

 obtained by prefixes and affixes : thus the passive of 

 verbs is formed by the addition of certain syllables 

 to the root. To form abstract substantives a compo- 

 sition of words takes place, which thus become 

 single words : some, however, of this kind, which are 

 found in the vocabulary, are not compatible with 

 the original simplicity of the New Zealand lan- 

 guage, and seem to have been formed as the ideas 

 of the natives began to expand by their contact with 

 people who had modes of thinking quite different 

 from their own, especially with the Christian mis- 

 sionaries. This compounding of words is, however, 

 a remarkable feature in the language, and renders it 

 very flexible, as the adding certain syllables to the 

 root gives it the power of expressing various mean- 

 ings. By the same licence, Greek and German 

 have become such rich languages, as they could in- 

 crease their stock of words without borrowing from 

 any other. If the New Zealander has adopted a 

 root from a foreign language, he does not adopt all 

 the derived words, but forms the latter according to 

 the genius of his own tongue. The New Zealand 

 language is therefore capable of being further deve- 

 loped, and is already a decidedly rich language. It 

 is not necessary to substitute another language for 

 their own. If we consider over what an immense 



