Page:An introduction to Indonesian linguistics, being four essays.djvu/251

Rh 25. The phenomena of childish speech recur to a great extent in IE. In certain of the Swiss dialects the word for “father” is Ätti, but other dialects replace it by Tätti, using therefore the form that involves infantile repetition: see “Schweizerisches Idiotikon”, I, 585. 26. The language of animals employs (inter alia) the method of infantile repetition, like the language of children. In the sixteenth tale in Adriani's “Leesboek in de Bareqe taal”, p. 17, 1. 10, the old mouse says kuko, for duṅko “crust of the rice-pap in the pan”. 27. Poetic language. The requirements of rhythm and rhyme produce all sorts of phonetic changes. Certain literatures, it is true, e.g. the Bareqe, do not tolerate such disfigurements, but others put up with a great deal in this respect. Such poetical deformations may be divided into two classes, viz., those which exhibit changes that are still within the limits of linguistic possibility, and on the other hand such as exemphfy deliberately artificial modification. I. To the first category belongs the poetic licence in Bisaya, whereby i before a vowel may be treated as a consonant, e.g., motya, for the trisyllabic motia, “pearl”. The change of i in this position into a consonant is found in the normal form of many IN languages: the Old Javanese WB ipi, “to dream”, has a conditional aṅipya. II. To the second category belong the most varied forms of licence, which for the most part are based on no principle. Sometimes they result from metric difficulties. Thus in the Balinese Epic Megantaka, strophe 318, verse 7, we find tos, for totos, “descendant”, because if totos had been used the verse would have had one syllable too many. In the second place, they may be due to difficulties connected with the rhyme. In the Minangkabau Epic “Kaba Sabay nan Aluyh”, verses 446, 447, read: "That we say yes, yes, that we say no, no" = maq kami bario-io, maq kami batido-tido. Here the form tido is a deformation of the normal tidaq, “no”, made to suit the rhyme, which consists in a similarity of both