266 The Oceanic Languages Shemitic : a Discovery. 



e.g., Acts vi. 4 ; Dan. ii. 43. This Ef. verb substantive and 

 the next mentioned are perhaps the only ones that have 

 preserved their original Sh. futures ; in another Ef. dialect 

 mi is used as v.s. instead of bi, future mo (vide above, Voc., 262), 

 used for wo, fo, o, with all verbs ; corrupted to ma in Tagala 

 and Mallicollo. This ma, mi, am, &c, is the most prevalently 

 used v. s. in Oc. as a kind of redundant auxiliary of the 

 present tense — e.g., it is thus prefixed to almost every verb in 

 Mg\, My., and Tannese, and to a good many in Ef. 



The commonest way of expressing the future in Ef. is by 

 prefixing a conjunction to the above wo, fo, or o ; and this 

 is exactly analogous to what was done in Ch. — e.g., in the 

 passage above cited (Dan. ii. 43), the Syr. expresses the future 

 by ( wu, without a prefixed conjunction, but the Ch. prefixes 

 the conj. 1 = that. The Ef. conj. = that, in order that, to, is 

 ki, so Raratongan ; Heb., ki. The Arm. equivalent of ki is 

 d, di. As 1 is used before the future of the verb subs, in 

 Ch. to denote the future, so k, ki in Ef., and so t in Tannese. 

 Like the Syriac, the Mg. does not thus use a conjunction. 



This conj. alone in Ef. put before any verb gives it the 

 force of a subjunctive, optative, imperative, precative, or 

 infinitive, according to the context or design of the speaker : 

 so the 1 Heb. and Ch. just mentioned was used in Sh. As 

 in Heb., when one verb follows another, according to a 

 frequent usage, the second is in the infinitive, with or 

 without this conj. prefixed to it, so exactly in Ef. The Syr. 

 m forming the infinitive is the Fiji me, doing the same ; and 

 also, like the Ef. ki, forming the imp. and subjunctive. We 

 should, therefore, expect to find that ma (Sh.) had anciently 

 been used, not only as a demonst. and interrogative pronoun, 

 but also as a conjunction, like the English that ; accordingly 

 we find Assy, "ma, conj. that" (Norris' Assy. Diet, s. v.). 



I have already spoken (above) of the formation of verbal 

 substantives. 



The simple verb in Ef. is either in the present or the past 

 tense, according to the context and intention of the speaker, 

 and often no auxiliary of the past is used. Sometimes, 

 however, the v. s. ka (cf. its use in Maori), Heb. chayah, is 

 used like the cognate word in Syr. A pluperfect is formed 

 in Ef. by suffixing to this ka (which may be regarded as a 

 preterite), another verb subst. i, Heb. hih (hay ah), thus, kai 

 (ka i) : so analogously a Syr. pluperfect is formed by putting 

 the cognate verb subst. after a preterite. 



