Page:An introduction to Indonesian linguistics, being four essays.djvu/144

132 which recurs in Nabaloi in the Philippines as guara, in Old Jav. in Java as wwara, and in Mentaway, on the South-Western Border, as bara. The original form is wara, with a w ; the other initials follow in strict accordance with phonetic law from that w. Now this word only appears in four areas of distribution, the Philippines, Java, the Eastern Border, and the South-Western Border; on our principles we cannot possibly pronounce it to be Common IN. Yet how shall we explain the fact that it occurs at these four widely separated points ? Has each of these languages created it by itself ? That would indeed be a remarkable coincidence, particularly in view of the perfect phonetic agreement. Has the word migrated ? Words with that kind of meaning are not much in the habit of migrating from one language to another; and how could it have skipped so many intervening territories ? There will be no alternative left but to pronounce wara to be an Original IN word like so many others.

Note.— Nabaloi guara < wara in conformity with the phonetic law: " Initial w appears in Nabaloi as gu ", hence also gualo, " eight " < walu. The phonetic laws which have produced Old Jav. wwara and Mentaway bara have already been mentioned.

189. The Original IN did not differ essenitially from the modern living IN languages. One important point of difference may be said to consist in the fact that it used more monosyllabic words of substance than the modern languages do. Modern Jav. has a considerable number of disyllabic words of substance which in Old Jav. were still monosyllabic: thus Old Jav. said duh, " gravy ", but Modern Jav. says duduh. Accordingly, as we go back from Modern Jav. to Old Jav. the number of monosyllabic words of substance increases; and when we go back from Old Jav. to Original IN it is to be expected that there would be a further increase.

190. The Original IN phonetic system had two distinct rs; in several of the modern languages the two rs have become fused into one; in others, again, the one r has turned into g or h, and the other r into l or d. These vicissitudes of the r