2 VOCABULAKY OF THE DUSUN LANGUAGE. 



the Bornean languag-es in relation to the entire Malayan fam- 

 ily. Yet the material which has been collected so far seems to 

 indicate that such a classification will not be a very difficult 

 task. The languages of Borneo proper and those of the mi- 

 gratory Bajaus or Sea Gipsies and of the inhabitants of Butong 

 (on the maps : Bouton) form one distinct group, which is 

 intimately related to two other distinct groups, that of the 

 Philippine and of the Sula-Amhoyna languages. These three 

 groups are evidently derived from a common source to which 

 the name Austro-Malayan language might have been applied, 

 had not this term lately been used to signify something very 

 different. I propose therefore to call it the Eastern branch 

 of the Malayan family of languages. There is also a corre- 

 sponding Western branch, of which modern Malay may be 

 regarded as type. From a comparison of these two branches 

 the Proto-Malayan language may be philologically recon- 

 structed. Such a task will, in the end, prove very useful in the 

 examination of the relation of the Malayan languages to either 

 the Indo-Chinese or the Polynesian families of languages. 



No such comparison is possible now, and if attempted 

 would only resemble the unsystematic researches of the past, 

 when writers put the Hebrew or Turkish into juxtaposition to 

 one or more of the Indo-European languages. 



In the folloM^ing pages I have abstained from entering 

 into the domain of comparative philology, and the Malay words 

 have been given in the vocabulary rather for the purpose of 

 of showing how far the Kadasan is separated from the lingua 

 franca of this archipelago. For those who are desirous of 

 studying the connection between the Dusun language and the 

 languages of the Philippine group I can recommend a com- 

 parison of the words I have given with those of the Sulu, 

 h}ngli'<h and Malay Vocabulary published by Mr. T. H. Haynes 

 in the Nos. 16 and 18 of this Journal. 



In explanation of my slatement above, that the Dusun 



