176 LINGUISTICS IN THE WESTERN PACIFIC. 
in Polynesia, though on Melanesian analogies their presence may be 
detected in the words in the dictionaries. Also, curiously enough, one 
of the Melanesian adjectival suffixes, na (which is a passive ending in 
Polynesia), has been noticed in only one Polynesian language in that 
capacity, and that only by deduction from a Melanesian example: 
Niuétavana clear, open; Mota wawanawide and flat; Dyak papan plank; 
Omba wawa open sea; Sa‘a taha to be open, clear; Maori tawha chasm 
(Sa‘a tahalaa chasm), tawhai to stretch forth the arms. 
Also in Malay, another example of a late language with much decayed 
forms of speech, Melanesia again supplies a means whereby correct 
deductions may be made as to the construction of various words and 
possibly also of various forms of speech, e. g., the presence of verbal 
suffixes and of noun suffixes. 
Apart from Dr. Codrington’s study of the Melanesian forms, who 
would have known that apa in siapa, the interrogative pronoun in 
Malay, apa what? siapa who? is a form of the word which in Mela- 
nesia appears as sava, hava, etc., and that the 51 1n siapa is really the 
personal article which appears in a NEE before the names of persons? 
Since in many words which are common to Malay and Javanese the 
Malagasy suppresses the initial s, this Javanese 57, the personal article, 
is shown by Dr. Codrington to be in all probability the Malagasy z, 
which is a personal article placed before the proper names of persons. 
Thus siapa who, in Malay is shown to correspond to the Mota 7 sava 
who! and sa mate, the deceased, in Malay is 1 mate in Mota. 
In this way, through the study of Melanesian linguistics, “the use of 
a personal article—a remarkable feature in a language—is found to 
prevail in Melanesia, 1 in Polynesia, in Madagascar, and in the Malay 
Archipelago.” ‘This discovery alone is surely sufficient to establish the 
importance of the study of the Melanesian languages. 
