Page:An introduction to Indonesian linguistics, being four essays.djvu/210

 SECTION VII : THE PERSONS.

118. The IN languages often possess two parallel series of personal pronouns: full forms and short forms. Thus in very many languages the full form of "I" is aku, while its short form in Bont. is ak, in Mal. ku, in Old Jav. k. Full forms are found in all the languages, so that this linguistic fact must be called Common IN; the distribution of the short forms is less extensive, though we find them in nearly all the great areas of distribution: in Celebes, Bug. possesses them, but Tontb. does not. In certain languages the series of the short forms is incomplete; others, on the contrary, have two series of them.

Note. — With the etymological relation between the full and short forms of the pronouns we need not deal here, as this is a monograph on the verb. Nor need we speak of the relation between the short forms of the personal pronouns and the possessive pronouns, which also appear as a species of short forms; e.g. Bont.: "I": full form = saken; short form = ak; possessive, "my" = ko. — Besides, I have said something about this subject in a former monograph.*

119. The full forms of the personal pronouns accompany the verb, either as subject or as object, in precisely the same way as substantives do. Thus in the Day. Story of the Inner Bark of the Tree we find :

The Inner Bark went = I. + B. the w. = keaṅ-ñamo tä hagoet. He went = iä hagoet. Hence in what follows we shall have but little more to do with the full forms ; we simply refer the reader to Section IX. On the other hand the short forms are eminently deserving of the attention of linguistic students, more particularly of those

Rh
 * ["Sprachvergleichendes Charakterbild eines indonesischen Idiomes", §§ 65, 157 seqq.]