LINGUISTICS IN THE WESTERN PACIFIC. 
The native peoples of the western Pacific (excluding the Australian 
aboriginals) are classified ethnologically in four divisions: Polynesian, 
Micronesian, Melanesian, Papuan. The languages of the first two 
divisions may be regarded practically as one and may be called, roughly, 
Polynesian. In Melanesia there are certain communities who do not 
speak Melanesian and whose language is reported to be allied closely 
to the language of Tonga, and who in consequence belong to the Poly- 
nesian division of speech. With the exception of these communities, 
all the other peoples in Melanesia use one type of spech. In Papua, 
at any rate on the south and north coasts, two completely different 
types of language exist—the one closely allied to Melanesian, the other 
separate and distinct and but slightly akin, if at all, to the languages 
even of the peoples in the neighboring islands of Torres Straits. 
This latter type Mr. S. H. Ray has named Papuan. 
In Polynesia proper there is but one type of language, and the 
Polynesian peoples inhabit the following group of islands: Hawaii, 
Marquesas, Tahiti, Paumotu, Mangareva, Niué, Samoa, Rarotonga, 
Tonga, New Zealand (Maori), Futuna and Uvea (Horn and Wallis 
Island), Tokelau (Ellice Group). In Melanesia, Polynesian-speaking 
peoples are found at Mele and Fila in Sandwich Island and on Fotuna 
and Aniwa in the southern New Hebrides; on Uea in the Loyalties; 
on Tikopia and Anuda; on Matema, Piten: and Nukapu in the Reef 
Islands off Santa Cruz; on Rennell and Bellona south of San Cristoval; 
on Sikaiana north of Ulawa; on the coral atoll Ongtong Java north of 
Ysabel, and on Nukuoro in the Carolines. 
Mr. Ray reckons the number of separate forms of Polynesian speech 
as 19 or 20. With the Polynesians each group or each separate island 
has practically only one language, and the languages of all the Poly- 
nesian peoples (with the exception of those in Melanesia) have been 
reduced to writing and grammars and dictionaries of them have 
been published. The Presbyterian missionaries in the New Hebrides 
have made certain studies of the four Polynesian languages in their 
sphere, but no linguistic work has been done on the other Polynesian 
languages in Melanesia and there is no way of knowing what peculiar 
characteristics they present, if any. 
It would be of considerable interest linguistically to know whether, 
in the case of the languages of Matema, Pileni, and Nukapu, the influ- 
ence of the neighboring Melanesian peoples has in any way altered the 
characteristic Polynesian features of speech, and whether there is any 
sign of a mingling of Melanesian peculiarities of speech with the radical 
characteristics of the Polynesian stock—any cross, so to speak, such 
as was effected in English by the introduction, ¢. g., of the romance 
prefixes and sufhxes. 
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