Page:An introduction to Indonesian linguistics, being four essays.djvu/153

Rh 5. Even those scholars who merely wish to study comparative phonology, must not think that this limitation of their aims dispenses them from the study of texts. I will emphasize that point by means of an example: one phenomenon of very frequent occurrence in IN is metathesis. Thus the Common IX* word pari, " ray " (a species of fish), appears in Tontemboan, of Northern Celebes, under the form pair. Such metatheses are inexphcable without the aid of a study of Kupangese texts. In Kupangese, a language spoken in Timor (an island lying near New Guinea), metathesis appears quite regularly in certain contexts. Common IN laku, " to go", and kali, " to dig ", are lako and kali in Kupangese; but the sentence " Then I went and dug a hole ", in the Story of the Fool (literally " then I went (to) dig hole ") is mo auk laok kail bolo. — Or, to give another example of the importance of texts even for the phonologist : in Minangkabau (in Sumatra) pronunciation and spelling diverge to a marked degree, and as a rule the spelling represents an older phase of pronunciation; hence the written language is of importance for comparative phonology. Now the grammar, with its practical tendency, only gives the spoken forms of words, not the written; and even the very carefully compiled vocabulary occasionally gives merely the spoken form. In such a case we can find the form which for us is the more important one only in texts printed in the native character. The word for " generation ", for instance, appears in the vocabulary only under the form sunduiq; but in the texts I find sundut, and that this find may be rehed on, i.e. that this spelling really embodies the older pronunciation of the word, is proved by the fact that Karo, another Sumatran language, actually says sundut. Here then we have a phonetic phenomenon which only a text could reveal, both grammar and vocabulary having failed us. Illustration: in the Minangkabau popular story entitled Manjau Ari, in the third line from the beginning, we find the words " from generation to generation ", which in the spoken language are sunduiq basunduiq, written s + u + n + d + u + t b + r + s + u + n + d + u + t.

*Common IN = occurring in all or at any rate most IN language; [See Essay II, especially §§ 2-4.]