CHAPTER IV. 
SOURCES AND USE OF THE VOCABULARY. 
We shall in this chapter pass to a more detailed examination of 
the vocabulary as under the regimen of the grammar of isolating 
speech. In the course of such examination we shall see the source 
of the odd quips and turns of speech which give the Beach-la-mar the 
twang of low comedy. But we are not to dismiss it lightly because 
it happens to be risible; even at the uttermost isles of the sea we are 
not to allow our readiness to see the jest obscure the fact that in it 
many a true word is spoken. It is a vivid and vital speech, and 
within its not inconsiderable area a most valuable means of com- 
munication, in fact the only feasible means. 
In the vocabularies proper to the several Melanesian languages 
the paradeictic words are very few in number and correspondingly 
general in their employment. Such we shall find the case in the 
Beach-la-mar; there are listed but a baker’s dozen such vocables, 
and of these five are recorded only in the most modern phase of the 
jargon and are of doubtful authenticity. 
To correlate them the more readily with our own speech we shall 
examine these in two classes according as they serve the end of our 
conjunctions or our prepositions. 
In this vocabulary we find citations exhibiting the use of the con- 
junctions and, but, if, or. It will be seen that with one exception 
(if reported by Captain Wawn in 1893 as from the eighties), these are 
all supported only by the most modern recorders. Against this we 
set the fact that in the Melanesian languages, indeed throughout the 
speech of the Pacific, the specific need of conjunctives has been 
little felt, and of disjunctives still less. Even so elemental an idea as 
is conveyed by and is conceived of only in the relation of two or more 
concrete objects; the conjunction of clauses and of sentences is 
effected by putting one in succession to the other without the use of 
a word expressive of such relation. In the version of the Eden 
sermon which is here cited the presence of the conjunctions is dis- 
tinctly a blemish upon the composition; if every and were deleted 
the result would be far better Beach-la-mar. The conditional particle 
is to a certain extent in other case. It is scarcely necessary to Mela- 
nesian thought and is forced upon the jargon from European needs. 
Phonetically it involves a labial which is not everywhere possible 
to the islanders; I have record of a scant fifteen languages in which f 
is possible, 15 out of 150. If the consonant were to be abraded 
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