136 R. H. MATHEWS. 



from Cape Howe to the Hawkesbury River. The article 

 now submitted is representative of the speech of the 

 aboriginal tribes from the northern frontier of Victoria 

 through a wide zone of central and western New South 

 Wales, extending into the southern portion of Queensland 

 at least as far as Maranoa and Burnett Rivers. 



The system of orthoepy adopted in this paper is the same 

 as that in my article on " The Aboriginal Languages of 

 Victoria," with the following exceptions : 



In the present paper, when the long sound of ct, e and u, 

 might be uncertain, these letters are marked thus, a, e, u. 

 In certain cases also where the short sound of u might be 

 doubtful if unmarked, it is shown thus, u. As far as pos- 

 sible, however, these vowels are not marked. 



The usual arrangement of words in a sentence is to place 

 the subject first, then the direct object, and lastly the 

 verb. The indirect object often follows the verb. An 

 adjective qualifying either the nominative or objective, 

 follows the noun. A native speaker puts himself in the 

 time of the event he is narrating; and when it is necessary 

 to quote some person's statement, instead of saying, for 

 example, "Tom told me so and so," he changes the tone 

 of his voice, and repeats the other man's words as nearly 

 as he can. An assertive sentence does not differ in form 

 from an interrogative one, but the distinction is indicated 

 by the modulation of the voice of the speaker. 



There are no words, properly so called, corresponding to 

 the English articles a and the. A blackfellow does not 

 trouble about the abstract idea of a man, a tree, and so on. 

 He speaks of some definite man or tree. The demonstra- 

 tive pronouns in their various forms supply the place of 

 the definite article. The adverb here and its variants, 

 except when used predicatively, is treated in native speech 



