MELANESIAN ANNOTATIONS ON THE VOCABULARY. 43 
into a medium of more or less precise communication of thought, 
we are to begin with the weaker forms, the more vocalic shapes, and 
employ such consonant possibilities as may exist to the particulariza- 
tion of a diffuse thought into a specific idea. 
In this instance assume a diffuse anua upon which arises the need 
of selection of one noumenon for specific designation. It is yet too 
early to attempt to pick out the broadly diffuse sense of archetypal 
anua. Even when it has been subjected to such influences of preci- 
sion as we here encounter, we find the sense still far too diffuse to 
comport with our conception of a vocable as a speech unit, for, as 
already pointed out, fanua has such a wide range of signification as 
shall include soil, land, house, hamlet, all in a single term. From 
extended comparison of the vocabulary material we discover that 
there were many meanings basic in an archetypal anua; we note 
solely for a single instance the anuanua which designates the rainbow 
and probably the Galaxy. When the need was felt in community of 
the parent stock of this speech, to particularize the group of signifi- 
cations hereinbefore noted there arose, or was reached after selective 
effort, the plan of employing, as the consonant modulant whose 
coefficient value should effect this end, a labial or, better stated, to 
use the lips. In my conception of what took place this determination 
was arrived at long anterior to the scission into independent speech 
units of the labial possibilities; this will serve best to account for 
the widest possible diversity of labial modulants such as we can trace 
out through this series. We meet here a most interesting problem, the 
conscious selection of a labial as modulant in this specification. To 
philology the problem must ever remain recondite, far beyond the 
possibility of linguistic solution; its comprehension must be left to 
psychology, and particularly to that new department of speech psy- 
chology in which Wundt has made such a brilliant beginning. Here 
we have not to deal with why a labial was selected for this purpose by 
infant minds in the infancy of speech; our task is simply to establish 
from the material spread upon this record before us the fact that by 
common consent a labial-at-large was chosen for this end and that 
each of the twigs of this language stem employs such one of the labials 
as best comports with the genius of its speech. When once the labial- 
at-large has come into being as the generally accepted consonant 
modulant of this specification of the vocable, and when each major 
group of the languages here involved had settled upon what partic- 
ular strength of labial to employ, we are willing to admit the commonly 
received laws of consonant mutation as becoming effective. ‘Thus 
in the case of the strictly Polynesian group we admit the selection of 
the spirant group and the choice out of that group by consonant 
mutation of surd Samoan fanua and sonant Viti vanua. 
