THE DEVELOPMENT OF LANGUAGE. 109' 



the verb to give it the sense of the passive participle. These particles 

 are a, ia, Jici, nia, tia, emdina. Thus, from ujiaji, to cover, we have 

 tifiufia, covered ; from taofi, to hinder, taofi-ia hindered ; from sila, 

 to see, silafia ; from ita, to hate, itania ; from si'i, (for sik'i) to lift up.. 

 si'itia; and from ave, to give, ave-ina. In Hawaiian, these affixes are 

 reduced to two, a and ia, as in lohe-a, heard, laive-ia, taken. Of two 

 or three others, some traces remain in isolated forms, as in axihuli-hia, 

 driven away ; tavAia, hung up, and piU-tia, crowded close. The 

 Marqiiesan has a, ia, Ida, and tia ; while the Tahitian has reduced all 

 the sutfixes to the single form hia. 



In the demonstrative pronouns, the Samoan makes a distinction 

 between the singular and the plural, which is lost in the western dia- 

 lects. Lenei, in the former, means this, and lena and lela (or lea), 

 that ; nei, na, and ia, are these and those. In Hawaiian, teia, eia, and 

 neia, all alike, mean this and these ; tela and ia both mean that and 

 those. In our own language, it is well known that the plurals 

 "these" and "those" are seldom used by the uneducated classes; 

 they say not " those boys " but "them boys." If a boatful of il 

 literate men and women from England or the United States were to 

 be cast on an unoccupied island, and to found a colony there, we may 

 be sure that the proper plural forms of the demonsti-ative pronouns, 

 would not be found in the colonial idiom. 



The result of our brief review of this most interesting linguistic 

 held is to show that the Polynesian languages afford a crucial test 

 and decisive proof of four most important principles of linguistic 

 science : 



1st. That the rate of change produced by lapse of time in unwritten 

 languages, when not atiected by conquest or other external influences,, 

 is extremely slow. The only change which the Samoan language seems 

 to have undergone in two thousand years is the loss of the k sound,, 

 which is replaced by a slight hiatus or catching of the breath. It 

 may be added that the evidence derived from the American languages 

 is all in the same direction. 



2nd. The change in a speech produced by emigration, when not 

 complicated by intermixture with otlier languages, is considerably 

 greater than that produced by mere lapse of time, but is still not 

 rapid, and not important. After two thousand years the descendants. 



