48 
PRESTON. 
nature. To begin with, aa may be either a verb, adjective, 
or noun, and some of its meanings are: 
to burn, to tempt , to defy, to girdle , to make a noise , £o 
send love. 
Then it may mean— 
spiteful, silent, stony, mischievous. 
And finally it stands for— 
fire, belt, dumbness , roofe of trees, pocket, bag, dwarf, lava, 
covering for the eyes, bird of prey, caul of animals, sea 
breeze at Lahaina, husk of the cocoanut, chaff, outside of 
seeds or fruit, red fish. 
Add to these some adjectives that may be derived from 
verbal meanings and the number may be considerably in¬ 
creased. It is evident that a necessary condition for the suc¬ 
cessful employment of a word of such unlimited power is 
great flexibility of construction. The groundwork of the 
language must be free from intricate forms of syntax. 
Used alone a may be a noun, an adverb, a conjunction, a 
preposition, an interjection, a verb, or an adjective. Under 
each part of speech it has several meanings. Here are a few 
when it is used as a noun : First, the jawbone; second, an 
instrument made of smooth bone, used in piercing unborn infants; 
third, broken lava; fourth, white spots in poi; fifth, a sea bird; 
sixth, a small fish; seventh, the alphabet. 
III.— Morphology. 
General Characteristics. —We now proceed to develop the 
peculiar genius of the Polynesian languages, and of the Ha¬ 
waiian in particular. They differ radically from the Indo- 
European family, which stands preeminent for the perfection 
of its organic structure, in three essential particulars: 
1. They are completely devoid of inflections. 
2. The vowel sounds largely predominate. 
3. The construction has great flexibility. 
