274 REVIEWg. 



which the text is actuallj' divided. Without the headings used in the 

 text and reduced to a running enumeration of the 462 paragraphs that 

 make up the grammar, the List of Contents makes the latter ^^Tongly 

 appear a mere aggregate of grammatical details, among the great mass 

 of which any particular matter is not easily detected. 



THE GRAMMAR. 



The Grammar begins by stating by whom the Bontok language is 

 spoken, and its territorial extension. 



The author then gives a list of the symbols used by him to represent 

 the sounds of that speech. As we become acquainted with the many 

 indistinct, fluctuating, and interchanging sounds with which it a]50unds, 

 we realize the difficulties the author had to conquer in making his way 

 through this first barrier and must admire the conscientious and pains- 

 taking manner in which he has undertaken to present to us throughout 

 the book the peculiar Igorot sotmds according to his system. It is but 

 a proof of this conscientiousness that he, himself, in the preface calls 

 attention to some inconsistencies in orthography, accents, and quantity. 

 We are told that these are but a consequence of the changing elocution of 

 the natives for whom he did not consider himself entitled to create a 

 normal language. This is a very sensible remark, and one that touches 

 at the root of the controversies which arise from time to time over the 

 proper graphic representation of several sounds occurring in all these 

 Indonesian languages, written or unwritten. Where the speakers them- 

 selves, contemporaries in the same town or settlement, are not yet agreed, 

 one with the other, nor each with himself, as to a definite pronunciation of 

 their tongue, the exploring linguist would indeed commit a mistake in 

 covering up the existing unstableness by fixing a normal spelling for 

 himself. There is one statement in the author's description of Bontok 

 Igorot sounds upon which some comment may be useful as it relates to 

 an apparent divergence of views foimd among some authors on Indonesian 

 languages. Under the heading diphthongs, the author states : "All diph- 

 thongs are vocalic with a final consonantal sormd y or «'." Eegarding 

 the class of diphthongs here implied, a similar remark is often met with, 

 namely, that the second part of the combination contains something con- 

 sonantal, or is a consonant. To explain this sound the two s)-mbols, y 

 (in Dutch ;') and ic. are referred to. It would certainly promote a clearer 

 understanding if, instead of two ambiguous letters the pronunciation of 

 which varies with different nationalities, a physiological description of 

 this consonantal something were given. What is to be understood here 

 by "consonant"? Is it, in the etjTnological sense, a sound which, more 

 or less indistinct to the ear if alone, only sounds together with a vowel ? 

 This would be nothing more than the ordinary character of the second 



