264 The Oceanic Languages Shemitic : a Discovery. 



by " printer's grammar" suffixed, Ef ., mara, manga, manang, 

 maro Mg., id.; Maori, ma ; Tannese, mi. In all these m is 

 the principal demonstrative ; Heb. m, also plural. The 

 Tannese use of m for plural is especially remarkable ; it has 

 been printed suffixed to nouns just as in Heb. In the My. 

 the plural is often represented by doubling, or re-duplicating 

 the noun ; not only is re-duplication much used in the Sh. 

 generally, but it is found used also m this particular way — 

 e.g., Assy., mami, waters ; and Syr., doka doka, places, leson 

 leson, tongues (Mark xiii. 8; Acts ii. 4). 



2. In Ef. and Oc, as in Heb. and Sh., a noun is in the 

 construct state when followed by a noun in the genitive or 

 by a pronominal suffix, and exhibits also, to some extent, 

 vowel changes connected with the throwing forward of the 

 accent ("to which," in Heb., as Gesenius says, " is commonly 

 given the name declension"). Thus, to take the Ef. word 

 tuo, foot, with suffixes, the accent is thus Shemitically thrown 

 forward. 



Tuongu, my foot ; tuongami, our foot (ngami being a 

 " grave suffix") ; and, to give an example of vowel as well as 

 accentual change, Ef., mata, eye — 



Mitangu, my ; mitama, your; mi tana, his eye ; mitangami, 

 our eye. Before nouns, thus, mal, place, but, middle — 



Male but, place of the middle ; and so natamol, man ; mita 

 natamol, eye of man. Naturally there is not nearly the 

 same fulness of declension by vowel and accentual change 

 in Oc. as in Sh. In My. the rule is thus given by Marsden 

 (in his Malay grammar), a name ever to be mentioned with 

 respect by a student of Oc. — " The most general rule, but 

 admitting exceptions as will hereafter appear, is, that upon 

 annexing a particle, the long vowel in the first syllable of 

 the primitive, if a dissyllable, or, if a trisyllable, in the 

 penultimate (the situations where they usually occur), 

 becomes short, and the short vowel (expressed or understood), 

 in the second or last syllable, becomes long . . . bini 

 (I omit his Arabic characters), wife, with nia (nya), becomes 

 bmi-nia, his wife." As in Sh., in some cases the noun in 

 the const, state differs only by its position from the noun 

 in the absolute state, so, perhaps, more frequently in Oc. 

 But we have traces in Oc. of Sh. grammatical forms now 

 no longer in living use, but regarded as parts of the root. 

 Thus, to take the Heb. pah or fah, fern., side ; const., 

 peth or feth (pet or fet), we have it in Ef. fa or va, side, and 



