Page:An Australian language as spoken by the Awabakal.djvu/47

 INTEODTTCTIOlf. XXXVH

British ISTew Guinea say ina-gu, 'my mother,' ia ina-na, 'his mother,' in e, 'mother,' where the ina is our Australian word; and, in Samoa, tina is 'mother.' Are these languages not akin? Is it possible that the Papuans, the Polynesians, and the Australians could have bori'owed from one another so essential a woi'd as ' woman,' ' mother "? Moreover, in Tamil, inu means 'to bring forth young' [cf. Eng. yean), and in Malay Induis a word for

VIII. The Pronouns as Test Words.

There are few languages in which the pronouns of the first and the second persons are declined throughout by the inflexion of the same base-stem. In the Aryan family, there are at least two bases for each of them, and these are often so disguised by the inflexions that it is diflicult to detect them. In English, for instance, there does not seem to be any etymological connection between / and me and loe, and a similar diversity exists in the Latin ego, mihi and oios, tu and vos ; in the Greek ego, viou, noi, hemeis ; in the Sanskrit aham, mam, vayam, or tvad and yush- mad. In Melanesian regions, the corresponding Papuan, Albannic and Ebudan pronouns are apparently considered so volatile and evanescent that a strong demonstrative is added as a backbone for their support, and thus the pronoun itself almost disappears from view. But many of these Melanesian pronouns usually have two forms — a longer and a shorter ; the longer and stronger is used for emphasis and can stand alone ; the shorter is suffixed to verbs and nouns, and it commonly shows the stem of the pronoun in its primary state. In Latin and Greek, we are already familiar with the strengthening use of demonstratives as regards these two personal pronouns, for we know that ego-ipse, ego-met, vos-met- ipsi, ego-ge, and the like, are used. As examples of the shorter Melanesian forms, I cite the Aneityumese etma-k, ' my father,' etma-m, 'thy father,' etma-n, 'his father,' where the k, m, and n repx-esent the three pronouns of which the longer possessives are iinyak, unyum, o un; corresponding suffixes are seen in the Papuan (Murua Is.) nima-gu ' my hand,' nima-mu, ' thy hand,' nima-na, 'his hand.' In Melanesian languages generally, either the separable possessive or its suffix form is used with nouns, although the one and the other use convey a slightly different shade of meaning; thus, the Tukiok dialect says either a nug ruma or a ruma-ig, 'my house,' and the Fijian something similar; but the Papuans say ia nima-na, 'his hand,' ina-gu, 'my mother.'

Each dialect in this volume has some peculiarity ; for the Wiradhari has something which looks like suffixed. pronouns,*

,and other instances in the same section.
 * See girugal-dw on page 111 of this Appendix, gaddal-rf^on page 112,

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