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IMPORTANCE AND NATURE OF THE OCEANIC LANGUAGES. 55 
Bopp writes :—‘‘ There are in Sanskrit and the languages which 
are akin to it, two classes of roots: from the one, which is by far 
the more numerous, spring verbs, and nouns (substantive and 
adjective) which stand in fraternal connection with the verbs, not 
in the relation of descent from them, not begotten by them, but 
sprung from the same shoot with them. From the second class 
Spring pronouns, all original prepositions, conjunctions and 
particles,”* 
It will be noted that the characteristics of the Aryan languages 
as here stated may be collected as. follows :— 
1. Roots which may be either nouns or verbs. 
2. Modifying particles or syllables which have no meaning apart 
from the principal word. 
3. One class of roots signifying things (nouns/, conditions 
(adjectives), or actions (verbs ). 
4. A second class of roots expressing relations of place (demon- 
strative pronouns and adverbs) and position (prepositions ). 
In summing up the characteristics of the Melanesian languages 
Dr. Codrington uses expressions almost identical with those of 
Schlegel and Bopp quoted above, and his remarks may be applied 
to all the Oceanic languages without exception. 
“There is an absence of those variations in the form of words 
which may distinguish the parts of speech. . . . The use of 
the word not its form, commonly declares its character. 
It is evidently wrong to speak of a noun as derived from a verb, 
while the form is unchanged.” + 
“Ttis highly probable that words generally are in the native 
mind names or nouns. ‘The thing, the action or the state, receives 
its name. Words thus are nouns or verbs and they receive dis- 
criminating marks, articles or verbal particles in these languages 
according to their use; but there is no such distinction in the 
native mind between the visible object and the visible act, as to 
* Bopp—Comparative Grammar, p. 96. 
+ Melanesian Languages, p. 102. 
