Page:An Australian language as spoken by the Awabakal.djvu/82

vi Having resided for many years in the island of Raiatea, and having been in the constant habit of conversing with and preaching to the natives in their own tongue, I am enabled to trace the similarity of languages used in the South Seas, one with another, proving they are but different dialects, although the natives themselves, and we also, at the first interview, could not understand the people of neighbouring islands, who speak radically the same tongue!

In the Australian tongues there appears to exist a very great similarity of idiom, as respects the dual number and the use of the form expressive of negation; and yet it is observed by a writer in the article on 'Greek language,' Rees's Cyclopœdia, that, "The dual number is by no means necessary in language, though it may enable the Greek to express the number 'two' or 'pair' with more emphasis and precision." But this assertion is not at all borne out by facts; because, in this part of the hemisphere, all the languages of the South Seas, in common with New South Wales, possess a dual number, and so essential is it to the languages that conversation could not be carried on, if they had it not. There is, however, a peculiarity in the dual of the Australian tongue which does not exist in the islands, namely, a conjoined case in the dual pronouns, by which the nominative and accusative are blended, as shown in the pronouns, whilst the verb sustains no change, excepting when reflexive, or reciprocal, or continuative. But in the Islands there are dual verbs. The modes of interrogation and replication are very much alike in the idiom of both languages, and so peculiar as hardly possible to be illustrated in the English language; for they scarcely ever give a direct answer, but in such a manner as leaves much to be implied. The aborigines of this colony are far more definite in the use of the tenses than the Islanders, who have nothing peculiar in the use of the tenses. The subject of tenses caused me much perplexity and diligent examination. Nor did the observations of eminent writers on the theory of language tend to elucidate the matter; because the facts existing in the language of the aborigines of New Holland are in direct contradiction to a note to the article 'Grammar' in the Encyclopœdia Britannica, where certain tenses are represented as "peculiar to the Greek, and have nothing corresponding to them in other tongues, we need not scruple to overlook them as superfluous." Now, our aborigines use the tenses of the verb and the participle variously, to denote time past in general; or time past in particular, as, 'this morning only;' or time past remote, that is, at some former period, as, 'when I was in England,' or, 'when I was a boy.' The future time of the verb and of the participle is also modified in a similar manner, specifically, either now, or to-morrow