TBE WOMBAT. 



THE WODDOWRO PRONOUNS. 



1>Y Johs Fraser, LL.D., Sydney. 



In December, 1897, I got a letter from Mr. John J. Gary, of 

 Geelong, stating that he had discovered in a tribal language of 

 Australia the existence of both a dual and a triple number for the 

 pronouns, and asking my opinion on the examples which he sent. 

 At that time I was busy organising Section F (Anthropology) of 

 the Science meeting which was held in Sydney the month after, 

 and so had not leisure to examine his examples carefully, but I 

 wrote an opinion as follows, which he afterwards printed. 



"An Opinion by Dr. Fraser. 



(1) " There ought to be no difficulty in accepting Prof. 

 Tucker's suggestion that these dual and ternal (i.e , triple or 

 trinal) examples contain the Australian numerals bul-a, ' two,' and 

 gul-i-ba, ' three,' for several islands of the New Hebrides occupied 

 by Melanesians akin to our Australian blacks have the numerals 

 ' two ' and k three ' incorporated in the dual and ternal forms of 

 their personal pronouns, and the Samoans of Polynesia and the 

 Papuan natives of the south coast of New Guinea have also their 

 word for ' two ' in their dual pronouns. 



(2) " If we admit hula and guliba, then your examples 

 should read — Dual : bang-(b)ul, bang-bul-ok, bang-a-bul-ong ; 

 bang-go-de-(b)ul, bang-go-de-bul-ok, bang-go-de-bulok. (I think 

 this last example must be wrong, for ' yours ' and ' theirs ' cannot 

 be expressed by the same form.) Ternal: bang-etuk-gul-ik, &c. 



(3) ' I do not think that bang-ik of your examples can be 

 the same word as bang, ' 1/ of Lake Macquarie, for your bang 

 occurs in ali the forms quoted, and it seems to me impossible that 

 a word meaning ' I ' should be part of a pronoun ' thou ' or ' he ' 

 or ' you ' ( plural). In human speech, ' he,' for instance, is a 

 simple demonstrative, meaning ' that ' or ' this one,' i.e., someone 

 distinct from the speaker, and so the word for ' I ' could not be a 

 part of it. 



(4) " But I think it probable that, in the sentence from which 

 you quote, the bang is a verb or a verbal noun (perhaps meaning 

 * be,' or ' strike,' or ?), and that the terminations which follow 



