ON THE ROOTS IN THE MALAY LANGUAGE. 263 
In conclusion we submit the followimg hypotheses : 
The stocks were derived from imitative and other in- 
voluntary sounds, sometimes even preserving, after the first 
and most prolonged period of their development, traces in their 
roots of the original primitive wording. Besides, foreign lan- 
guages have done much to bring about a state of perfection. 
It is not necessary for the roots to have been exclusively 
monosyllabic. The tone-imitative monosyllables consist, for 
the most part, of three elements, a consonant, a vowel and a 
final consonant. When, in compliance with some system, a 
word becomes deprived of its terminal consonant, it can no 
longer be considered a true root, all that is left being an ab- 
stract tone. If we remove thes from the Malay word tis, we 
obtain a curtailed form which cannot justly be deemed a real 
root. , 
That ditterences of surroundings originally gave rise to a cor- 
responding variation in the roots cannot be questioned, yet, 
considering the uniformity of the psyche and the fact that 
the ancient races had still always some points in common, these 
must often have met in their utterances. Hence, to found the 
assertion that there is a family relationship existing between 
various branches, on the mere fact of a resemblance in sound 
between certain roots, would not suffice to place it beyond the 
pale of dispute. 
But these tone-imitative sounds coupled with those others, 
whose mutual agreement is a circumstance of far less frequent 
occurrence, and further combining with them to supply, by 
means of a portion of every imaginable determinative affix, the 
entire grammatical and lexicographical store in the word-struc- 
ture of the language, we say, these two classes of tones, modi- 
fied after the manner already stated, must certianly have pro- 
duced an indefinite number of unconnected, independent lan- 
guages which have, in some measure, long since disappeared. 
We beg leave to conclude this discourse with the above 
suggestions, and we trust that, provided always they are 
found to rest upon a sound basis of actual fact, they may | 
be considered to have established a fair claim on the student’s 
attention. 
