Page:An introduction to Indonesian linguistics, being four essays.djvu/224

212 = těmar sěut bandum ěṅkut : ño mĕnan. In Bug., in a letter of the Princess Aru Panchana we find the expression: "What is the price of this gold thread?" = What price of it gold thread this = siaga ělli na wěnampulawěn ede.

II. IN possesses a feature which the grammars rightly call a copula. Only it is not a verb, but a particle, viz., i or ay or ya, etc., which links different parts of the sentence, particularly subject and predicate, together. The copula is found in the Philippines, in Northern Celebes and in Madagascar; it cannot, therefore, be called Common IN.

142. The status constructus, in Nias.

It is formed principally in two ways: words that begin with a vowel take n or g before that vowel; words that begin with a surd turn it into a sonant. Many words do not form the status constructus at all. Examples:

The status constructus serves the same purpose as the copula, it links the several parts of the sentence together, especially the subject with the predicate. "Rat" is tequ and "to go" is moi, and in the Story of the Rat and the Fish the phrase "the rat goes" is: moi dequ.

Note.—The first method of forming the status constructus may be thus explained: the sounds n and g are the prepositions n and ka, respectively. The preposition n has been mentioned at the beginning of this section; ka, which, in accordance with the Nias phonetic laws stated in Section III had to become ga, has been repeatedly referred to. But we have also learnt that n is a Common IN preposition for the genitive relation and ka for the place "whither". We must, therefore, assume that the two prepositions have considerably enlarged their sphere of action, or have made it more general. This assumption is rendered credible by the fact that there are parallel processes in Mentaway, which is a near neighbour to Nias geographically and shares a number of special features