Page:An introduction to Indonesian linguistics, being four essays.djvu/257

Rh eminent students of linguistic psychology may err, when they venture into IN without definite guidance.

IV. Many scholars who compare the vital phenomena of different families of speech, inter alia IE and IN, have it as their aim, either principal or subsidiary, to ascertain what linguistic phenomena should be esteemed as expressions of the higher intellectuality. Without exception, they arrive at the conclusion that the IN languages, as compared with the IE, bear the mark of inferiority. Now if the deductions which led them to that conclusion were unassailable, one would have to submit to them ; but so far as the IN languages are concerned, I will undertake to show that these arguments, also without exception, betray inadequate knowledge, partiality, etc. As regards two scholars, Durand and Taffanel, I demonstrated that in a former monograph. Let us now take a more recent case. Finck, in his work "" Die Haupttypen des Sprachbaues", p. 94, deals with the structure of the sentence in Samoan, and in connexion therewith, rightly enough, dis- cusses the part which is played by the numerous particles — i.e., prepositions, conjunctions, words of emphasis, etc. — in knitting together the several portions of the sentence. He then arrives at the conclusion that these particles have not the power to weld the Samoan sentence into a unity, and his final verdict is that Samoan does not possess the complete, definite sentence-structure that IE has. This implies a judgment that convicts a language of the IN-Polynesian family of inferiority in an important manifestation of its linguistic vitality. But Finck overlooks the fact that Samoan, like all the languages of the IN-Pol. family, has other means of attaining the completeness, and in particular the definite rounding off, of the sentence, means which can be employed in addition to, or in lieu of, the particles. One such means, for example, is the tonal accentuation of the sentence (see § 335), whereof Finck says not a syllable. And how inadequately Finck — and his authorities — grasped the real nature of these very particles, is drastically illustrated by the way in which he translates the title of the Samoan text selected by him as an