Ray & Haddon — The Languages of Torres Straits — II. 145 



Macgillivray, 



. piheipa, 



wanipa, 



purteipa 



MacGregor, 



. paiiano, 



wanin, 



pourtano 



Maefarlane, 



. poilan, 



warn, 



purtan. 



Stone, 



. paihan, 



toanika, 



prutiJca. 



Sharon, 



. poiiaipa, 



loaniz, 



purutan. 



Macgillivray alone assigns any definite meaning to the words given 

 (the forms in pa being given as present tense). An examination of the 

 Gospel translation does not make the subject much clearer, even after 

 a careful comparison with the Lifu version used by the translator. 

 In Lifu, verbs undergo no change of form to express time or mood, 

 all variations in meaning being expressed by separate words or par- 

 ticles ; and hence, no doubt, the Lifu translator's difficulty in using 

 the Saibai affixes. The compilers of the vocabularies seem to have 

 taken the words as given in the Gospel in a general sense, and with 

 no attempt to discriminate their meaning. That the discrimination is 

 difficult, appears from the remarks of Macgillivray, whose notice of 

 the verb is the only one in which an endeavour has been made to 

 ensure accuracy. Por this reason it is here given in full. He 

 says [ii., p. 307] : — 



" After tabulating 100 Kowrarega verbs in all the different forms 

 in wMch they had occurred to me, I yet failed in arriving at a know- 

 ledge of their mode of formation, owing to the deficiency of data on 

 one hand, and the presence of some apparently defective and irregular 

 verbs on the other. Still, some of the results are worth recording. 

 Leaving out the consideration of the irregular verbs, I can speak with 

 certainty of only two moods, the indicative and the subjunctive, 

 of the present and the past (probably really further divisible) tenses 

 of the former, and the present of the latter. As an example I may 

 give the verb ' to strike,' of which the root is assumed to be 

 * matum = a stroke.' 



Indicative present, nudu ngatu matumeipa = I am striking him. 



,, perfect, ,, „ matumina = I struck him. 



,, future, ,, ,, mafumeipaJcai = 1 shall strike him. 



Imperative present, ,, ngidu matumur = strike him. 



"Assuming a root to each, I find 94 of the verbs under examina- 

 tion to agree in having the present tense of the indicative terminating 

 mpa : of these, 70 end in eipa,'^ 14 in ipa, 6 in epa, and 1 in aipa. 



^ Misprinted aipa in the original. 

 E.I.A. PEOC, SEE. in., VOL. IT, L 



