24 BEACH-LA-MAR. 
incorporates the naming element of the stem and the substantive 
force. It is about as near aswe can come to the isolating signification 
when we attempt to render it in our own analytic speech, we may 
come a little closer in the rendering ‘‘ being-a-telling.”’ 
Thus are we come to the point where I may venture upon a defini- 
tion of the attributive as a part of isolating speech. It is the sub- 
stantive pronouncement of the existence of a state, of a quality, or of 
an action. Under that definition we need not concern ourselves in 
the least with the noun or the verb, the adjective or adverb, which 
are yet long uncertain epochs of evolution in the future. 
With this fixed in the comprehension it is not difficult to see how 
tala may seem to us now noun and now verb, yet to the Samoan 
intelligence may be a single speech unit undifferentiated. I have 
introduced /e tala as exhibiting the usage in which tala holds the 
position of a noun such as we understand. To the Samoan this word 
group means “‘the—being-a-telling,’’ and that will at once be seen 
to be the basic signification of what we mean under our noun “‘story.”’ 
Again I have introduced this other word group as illustrating the 
verb function of the stem, ‘ou te tala. In the Samoan sense this is 
“‘of-me—the—being-a-telling,”’ that is ‘‘mine-the-telling,’’ and that 
finally is “I tell.’”’ Accordingly we have established, at least suffi- 
ciently for the purposes of this treatise, the essential nature of the 
attributive words in the isolating speech of Melanesia. 
This chapter may seem a pause in the narrative of the evolution 
of the Beach-la-mar. Yet it is most essential; the vocabulary is 
alien; when put to use by the islanders it is under the rule of the 
grammar of isolating speech; only with this preliminary sketch of 
that grammar can we trace out the turns of the jargon. No matter 
from which of the parts of English speech a jargon vocable may be 
derived, there is no difference in its employment; in Beach-la-mar 
it may be attributive, demonstrative, or paradeictic—none other, 
since none other there is. Into whichever of these three parts of 
speech the adopted alien vocable falls it is under the Melanesian 
rules governing the traffic in such part of isolating speech. 
