50 
THE LANGUAGES OF BORNEO. 
GRAMMATICAL STRUCTURE OF THE BORNEO LANGUAGES. 
The lists compiled by the Officers of the Sarawak 
Government for Dr. Meyer contained no sentences showing 
the grammatical structure of the languages, neither did 
they contain any specimens of pronouns, adverbs, particles 
or numerals. My own lists contained the pronouns and 
numerals, with a few adverbs, but my stay in any one 
place was too short for any systematic work to be done in 
grammar, although a few elements were noted here and 
there. 
For languages other than those recorded by the Officers 
and myself there are found only seven notices of Grammar. 
These are: (1) Hardeland’s ‘ Grammatik der Dajacksche 
Sprache’ (65),* and (2) the sketch by von der Gabelentz 
of the same language (50); (8, 4) Tarakan and Bolongan 
Grammars in Beech’s ‘ Tidong Dialects of Borneo ’ (227); 
5) a synopsis of Sea Dayak grammar prefixed to Howell 
and Bailey’s ‘ Dictionary ’ (212) ; (6) some MS. notes on 
Singgi Land Dayak, by the Rev. A. Reijffert, at the end of 
his vocabulary (202) ; and (7) two chapters on the (Land) 
Dayak Language, by the Rev. W. Chalmers, in Grant’s 
“ Tour ” (89). Some of the printed vocabularies contain 
Pronouns, Numerals, and Adverbs, and a few, as e.g., 
Burns (44) and Douglas (253) have short references to 
Grammar. Some sentences illustrating structure are ap¬ 
pended to the Siduan and Bisaya vocabularies of Messrs. 
Chynoweth (264) and Barry-Giffard (263). The structure 
of the Manyan and Beta Land Dayak may be gathered 
from the translations in those languages (223 and 260). 
I do not propose in this place to give any detailed 
account of the grammar of the languages, and only offer a 
few general observations. But I have given, as far as I 
can, a list of pronouns (personal, interrogative, and demon¬ 
strative) and numerals. 
1. Phonology. 
Dr. Meyer did not supply his informants with any code 
for writing the sounds of the languages, and with few 
exceptions the earlier printed vocabularies followed no 
definite rule. Hence there is some variation in represent¬ 
ing the sounds. The chief difficulties seem to have been 
to distinguish between the sounds of d, u, a, and between 
* The numbers in heavy type refer to the Bibliography. 
