280 Aboriginal Dialects, ^"c, of Tasmania. 



or essential constituent of words. To defects in orthoepy 

 the Aborigines added short-comings in Syntax, for they ob- 

 served no settled order or arrangement of words in the con- 

 struction of their sentences, but cojiveyed in a supplementary 

 fashion by tone, manner, and gestm-e those modifications of 

 meaning wdiich Ave express by mood, tense, number, &c. 

 Nor was this a matter difficult of accomplislunent amongst 

 a people living in a state so primitive that animal wants and 

 gratifications, and the exigences of the chase and of war, 

 comprised the sum total of events which characterized their 

 existence either as individuals or as members of the commu- 

 nities to which they belonged. Barbarous tribes, living 

 in isolated positions, antagonistic to and repellant of 

 each other, would each, within its own sphere, yield to va- 

 rious influences, calculated to modify language, and to con- 

 firm as well as create dissimilarity. New words introduced 

 into the language of civilized and lettered commmiities, be- 

 tray their origin and relationship to pre-existing words in 

 the same or in cognate and kindred tongues ; but rude 

 savage people often adopt the most arbitrary and mi- 

 meaning sounds tln'ough caprice or accident, to represent 

 ideas, in place of words previously in use ; a somxe of mu- 

 tation, as respects the various dialects spoken amongst the 

 Aborigines of V. D. Land, fertile in proportion to the nrun- 

 ber of tribes into which they were divided, and the ceaseless 

 feuds which separated them from one another. Hence it 

 was that the numerous tribes of Tasmanian Aborigines were 

 fomid possessed of distinct dialects, each differing in many 

 particulars from every other. 



It has akeady been implied that the Aborigines had ac- 

 quired very limited powers of abstraction or generalization. 

 They possessed no words representing abstract ideas ; for 

 each variety of gum tree and wattle tree, &c. &c., they had 

 a name, but they had no equivalent for the expression 

 " a tree" ; neither could tliey express abstract qualities, such 



