PREFACE. 
The two languages, Sa‘a and Ulawa, of which a dictionary is here 
presented, belong to one of the Melanesian groups of the Oceanic 
family of languages. Ulawa is the language spoken in the ten villages 
of the small island of Ulawa, the Contrariété Island of the charts, in the 
southeast Solomons. Sa‘a is spoken in its purity in the village of the 
same name, the last inhabited place on the southeast extremity of the 
large island of Malaita, which lies some 30 miles west of Ulawa. 
Malaita is composed of two islands, commonly called Big and Little 
Malaita, separated by a narrow channel designated Mara Masiki Chan- 
nel on the Admiralty chart, but called Laloi Su‘u (literally “within-the- 
inlet’’) by the people who use the languages presented here. Sa‘a is 
situated on the Malaita coast exactly opposite Ulawa, and there is con- 
stant communication between the two places during the calmer weather 
after the dropping of the southeast trade winds. ‘The two languages 
are evidently from a common stock and are so closely allied that it has 
been found quite possible in the present work to adjust the various 
details to the same scheme of treatment, both as to grammar and 
vocabulary. 
Of the two, Sa‘a is far more highly. specialized than Ulawa. This 
specialization is shown: 
1. In the use of nouns in the singular number, and particularly of such 
as are the names of parts of the body, without the definite article 
nga being prefixed. 
2. In the very careful observance of the phonetic rule that the vowel a 
changes to e in certain words after a preceding 7 or u or after the 
verbal particle ko. 
3. In the very frequent use of the gerundive. 
4. In the richer vocabulary and in the employment of words not used in 
Ulawa in order to avoid uncertainty in meaning, ¢. g., Sa‘a nume 
house, nime bowl, where Ulawa employs nima for both; Sa‘a domu 
to fall (of persons only) in addition to ‘usu, where Ulawa has only 
‘usu for both. 
s. In the fuller forms of the pronoun used as subject of the verb and in 
the more particular and careful use of the quasi-trinal forms end--. 
ing in —lu. 
6. In the dropping of an inner consonant in the reduplication of stems. 
The name of Contrariété Island is Ulawa and not Ulava or Ulaua, as 
is sometimes found; the language has no v sound, and in Lau, where 
w changes to q (kw), the island is known as Ulaqa. The number of 
persons who live on Ulawa and who speak Ulawa is not more than 1,200. 
at the outside; but the language has a certain and considerable extrinsic 
importance in view of the fact that a number of villages on Ugi, the 
island lying off the east coast of San Cristoval, have Ulawa teachers 
and are using Ulawa books. * 
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