LINGUISTICS IN THE WESTERN PACIFIC. 163 
THE VERB. 
Under this heading come verbal and negative particles, transitive 
suffixes, the native view of time, etc. 
PREPOSITIONS. 
A list of these should be made in Mota according to whether they can 
be followed or not by the demonstrative na before the noun. 
GENERAL DIRECTIONS. 
Many missionaries have to learn new Melanesian tongues and have 
to commit them to writing for the first time. It is always important 
to remember that practically one grammatical framework will serve 
for all the Melanesian languages; the style of the languages is the same 
throughout. 
One system of orthography will avail throughout and special pro- 
vision can be made for rare or exceptional sounds. Generally it will 
be found that the sounds in the Melanesian languages are not very 
different from the sounds in the well-known European languages, and 
in representing them it will be sufficient to take the ordinary sounds 
of the English alphabet and by the additional use of italic letters 
make provision for nasal or guttural variations of well-known sounds. 
Modifications of the vowels can be shown by the’use of the dizresis. 
The points noted above are the main points to be kept in view in the 
endeavor to acquire any new Melanesian language. 
As will be noticed farther on, familiarity with Mota was a decided 
help in linguistic study in Melanesia, but a man would be very apt to 
be led astray if he made Mota a rigid standard. 
Too much stress can not possibly be laid on the value of learning 
lists of words by heart: ‘‘Let each object bring some native sound 
ringing in your ears, so that the sound brings the object before your 
eyes. Do not be content to speak asa European. ‘The real and most 
stringent test of the knowledge of a language is whether you can under- 
stand the natives speaking among themselves. To know thoroughly 
by book is a different thing from knowing by ear. I believe we must 
learn like children, through the ear, not by books much.” (Pilking- 
ton, of Uganda.) 
TRANSLATION OF SCRIPTURE. 
The use of Melanesian languages by a missionary is confessedly only 
the preliminary to his using them as a vehicle for conveying the divine 
message of salvation. To the mind of the missionary the end and 
object of a native language, the very reason for its existence, is that it 
should be used for the worship of God and for the dissemination of 
religious ideas among the people who use it, and to the mind of the 
churchman a language has attained to the height of its glory when it 
