Page:A dictionary of the language of Mota.djvu/9

Rh objects, as will be seen in the examples given in the Dictionary. The abundant illustration, given by Professor Kern, of the Fiji language by the languages of the Malay Archipelago and Madagascar shews in a striking and incontrovertible manner the large stock of words common in various forms to the most widely distant members of the Family.

In the second place a few words are needed to make clear the relation between the Polynesian and the Melanesian groups of languages. It is certain that many words are common to both, and it is certain also that there are among Melanesians colonies or settlements of Polynesian people of pure Polynesian speech. In Mota, in particular, there are many words which are evidently the same with those that answer to them in Samoa. To the question whether generally the Melanesian vocabularies have borrowed the words common to them and to the Polynesian from the Eastern Polynesian islands, an affirmative answer is hardly likely now to be given. It was natural that missionaries, for example, who found in New Guinea what they had left in Samoa, should be disposed to think so; but it is impossible to hold such an opinion when it is known that these words, common to Polynesia and Melanesia, are common also, in very large measure, to Micronesia and Indonesia; and further, that these common words have, as a rule, a fuller form in Melanesian than in Polynesian languages. If the question be narrowed to the comparison of Mota and Samoa one example will suffice, the interrogative 'what.' To follow the series in which, geographically, the Indonesian apa, aha, pass to New Guinea saha, tava, daha, and Melanesian sava, hava, taha, safa, cava, and to the Polynesian aha, aa, a, leaves no doubt that the Mota sava and the Samoan a are the same word; but no one can believe that Mota borrowed sava from Samoa. When Vocabulary is left for Grammar, the respective uses of the suffixed personal pronouns indicating possession in Melanesian and Polynesian languages point plainly in the same direction.

No attempt has been made in this Dictionary to bring together all the words from cognate tongues which may be taken to be parallel to the Mota forms. It has been my aim to produce illustrative examples which may suffice to shew the connexion of the Mota language with the others. If in comparison with a Mota word examples can be brought from the three great divisions of the Ocean Family outside the limits of