ON THE ROOTS IN THE MALAY LANGUAGE, 261 
situated between the calf and the heel, while oerat kéting is the 
term by which the tendon achilles is known, and méngéting is 
only used in the sense of severing or cutting through that par- 
ticular tendon of a man called the tendon achilles. Mengatok, 
with a as its first vowel, signifies tapping on a person’s head or 
striking a flint with a piece of steel; by inserting an n in keé- 
tang and repeating the word, thus, kéntang, we get a wooden 
block struck with a cudgel by the night-watchman as a sign- 
al. To these words the following are probably akin in point 
of origin, ké/ontang, a scare-crow ; kélontong, a pedlar ; kélinting, 
a Chinese pagoda! we fancy this word is also traced as pro- 
ceeding from a Chinese source); kéléntingan and kéréntingan, 
ear-rings, Many more examples of this kind could be easily 
found. 
Were it our intention to exhaust the subject to which we 
have been able to do little more than call attention, we shouid 
now, Without further delay, have to speak of the new change 
of tone, obvious from the above examples, viz., the contraction 
of a dissyllable into a monosyllable in the first term of the word, 
and also the phonetic variation of the consonants which, as in 
all other languages, is, doubtless, also here originally due to 
merely dialectic differences, but may, nevertheless, at one time 
have defined the meaning of the word to some extent. Be- 
sides, at the very outset and taking precedence of every other 
question, the direction of our discourse should now tend to- 
wards an enquiry into the laws regulating such tone-words as, 
in contradistinction to these already considered, we are obliged 
to term arbitrary in default of being able to think of a more 
suitable and descriptive expression, one that would define the 
class better. For, although we have seen that there are words 
whose origin is traced to involuntary verbal imitation of sound, 
a still greater number probably owe their existence to caprice, 
a fact continually remarked in the case of children who habitu- 
ally render the thing they see, or what they see occurring, by 
self-coined tones, doubtless very arbitrary, but due to clearly 
indicated natural causes nevertheless, and for this reason agree- 
ing, now and then, with the equally arbitrary utterances of 
other children. 
