June 1, 1900.] 



SCIENCE. 



849 



ne-pas is precisely parallel, and the French 

 equivalent of the Hawaiian phrase is : 

 Les gens de Honolulu 7i'ont pas d'instituteur. 

 The interjection of words between two 

 parts of a verb as in the German is very 

 common, as : 



Na lawe malu ia Jce dala. 

 The other form would be with latveia as 

 one word ; and the phrase translated into 

 German, using a separable verb to show the 

 correspondence, would be : 



Man nahm das Oeld JieimlicJi iceg. 



Here is a case where the regular German 

 separable verb construction is duplicated 

 in Hawaiian. 



Flexibility. — The Polynesians avoid inflec- 

 tion. But if their language is loose and 

 cumbersome in this respect there are cor- 

 responding advantages. Indeed, from this 

 very fact great flexibility becomes a neces- 

 sity, and any sentence may be cast in a 

 variety of ways, depending on the idea 

 which is to take precedence or acquire 

 emphasis. Take the phrase, ' I give this 

 to you. ' Here we have five words. The 

 sentence may have as many different ar- 

 rangements in Hawaiian, according to the 

 shade of meaning sought. When it is de- 

 sired to bring out the fact that an object is 

 given and not loaned, the words ke haawi 

 take precedence, as : 



Ke haawi aku nei au i keia ia oe. 



When prominence is given to the idea 

 that it is I and not some one else who gives, 

 the form is : 



Owau ke haawi aku nei i keia ia oe 



and so on through the five different arrange- 

 ments, each laying stress on a different idea 

 and all perfect models of pure Hawaiian 

 syntax. It cannot be denied that this flex- 

 ibility gives to the language a power and 

 subtlety unknown in the inflected tongues. 

 We are all familiar with that inimitable 

 scene in the Bourgeois Gentilhomme, of Mo- 



lidre, where a lover repeats in flve different 

 ways: " Fair Marquise, j'our beautiful eyes 

 make me die of love." The actor succeeds 

 in revealing an ardent passion, but his 

 French is intolerable. An untutored Kan- 

 aka from the South seas would have been 

 able to bring out in his native speech all 

 these shades of meaning, impossible in the 

 cultured language of France. But the 

 French language, proud mistress that she is, 

 will not tolerate these liberties of construc- 

 tion that the Polynesian tongues not only 

 permit but even court. The higher the 

 civilization, the more acute are the forms 

 of thought. The more exacting the rules of 

 syntax become, the more limited appears 

 the capacity for flexibility. 



It is a peculiar trait of the language that 

 the same word may be used as a verb, noun, 

 adjective, or adverb. As an example, let 

 us take the common word aloha, and we 

 have 



As a verb: ke aloha aku nei au i kuu 

 hoalauna — 



I love my friend. 

 As a noun: he aloha kona i kona hoalauna — 



he had love for his friend. 

 As an adjective: he alii aloha no ia i kona 

 hoalauna — 



he is indeed a loving chief to his friend. 

 As an adverb ; hana aloha ae la keia ia ia — 



that person treated him with friendship (love). 

 Even the pronoun I can be used as a verb. 

 A native, relating his reply to the question 

 as to who possessed a hat, said : 



Owau aku la no hoi au owaa, 

 which translated literally is : 



I ' ied ' to him, I 

 that is, 



I said to him I had. 

 But then our language is sometimes given 

 similar license. A schoolmaster once asked 

 for an example of an interrogative pronoun 

 used as a verb. ISTo one was able to reply 



