Page:An introduction to Indonesian linguistics, being four essays.djvu/37

Rh Toba das, “announced (of a message)”, shows that Karo landas, “evident” = lan + das.

Toba ṅal, “too tight, short of breath”, shows that Karo doṅal, “disheartened” = do + ṅal.

37. It has been shown, particularly by the researches of W. Schmidt, that the Austroasiatic languages on the mainland of Asia are in some way related to the IN languages. And as the former possess many monosyllabic word-bases, the view has been expressed that light could be thrown from that quarter on the nature of the IN roots. That may be, but the IN material has become so extremely abundant, particularly through the classifying work of Dutch scholars, that IN research needs no such assistance. Further, the present writer knows that students of the Austroasiatic languages, such as Cabaton, Aymonier, Blagden, and Skeat, favour caution in proceeding along this line of comparative enquiry.

Such caution, however, will above all else imply that we must first study each of the two groups, the Austroasiatic and the IN, exhaustively by itself before we proceed to a comparison of the two. Further, Austroasiatic and Austronesian parted from one another, in some remote prehistoric age. In each of these two fields of research we must, therefore, first endeavour with the help of phonetic laws to work back to the primitive forms and then compare these with each other.

Several scholars, particularly Kern, have also established some very interesting points of relationship between Indonesian and Polynesian. Nevertheless, as Wulff justly observed in his critique of the present writer's “Matahari”, we can and may pursue IN studies without introducing the Polynesian languages into our sphere of research.