Page:An introduction to Indonesian linguistics, being four essays.djvu/249

Rh ilat, disfigured from pilat, "membrum virile". Such deformations usually occur on the analogy of some other, more or less comiected, word: thus Hat, on the analogy oiila, "shame".

19. Tendency towards disyllabism. Whereas the forces thus far mentioned, analogy, popular etymology, etc., operate in IE as well as in IN, the tendency towards disyllabism is exclusively peculiar to IN. Its significance was already recognized by Humboldt in his "Kawisprache", pp. ccccii seqq. The WB's of the IN languages are as a rule disyllabic, and the genius of the IN languages is often impelled to squeeze into this mould such words as are not really disyllables at all or have lost that form in the course of linguistic evolution. Thus the Dutch word lijst, "list", appears in several IN languages under the form eles, with a prothetic formative ĕ which has no meaning or significance; and "Rome", i.e., Constantinople, is called Ruhum in Minangkabau, not Rum.

20. Between the written language and the colloquial in IN there are often phonetic differences. The one of most frequent occurrence is that the colloquial allows abbreviations which are avoided in the written language. Thus spoken Javanese says dulur, "brother or sister", for the written sĕdulur.

21. The phonetic phenomena hitherto described occur in ordinary, normal speech. Besides this we find in IN certain special modes of speech. These are the language of children, the language of animals in the beast fables, poetic language, and various artificial languages.

22. The language of children in IN has the four following characteristics :

I. Substitutioti of one sound for another. "As long as a Bareqe child is unable to pronounce the velars, it regularly replaces them by the dentals; thus it says atu for Original IN, and also Bareqe, aku, 'I'. Small children often pronounce c for s, and accordingly say cucu for Original IN, and likewise Bareqe, susu, 'breast'" (Adriani).