Page:An introduction to Indonesian linguistics, being four essays.djvu/84

72 the Malay Peninsula with the adjacent islands, and lastly Madagascar. — The three border districts are : in the North, the Batan Islands and Formosa; in the East, the islands from Lombok towards New Guinea, of whose languages the best known to us are Bimanese, Kamberese, Sawunese, Rottinese, Tettum, and Masaretese; in the South -West, the row of islands behind Sumatra: Simalur, Nias and Mentaway. — Another border district, viz. Halmahera * and the adjacent islands, cannot be included in our survey because there is a doubt whether it really belongs to the IN linguistic area: see Van Hinloopen Labberton, " Handboek van Insulinde ", p. 88.

Note II. — It is of course not to be expected, and indeed it will seldom happen, that we shall be able to demonstrate the existence of one and the same linguistic phenomenon in all these ten areas of distribution; the Malay Peninsula area in particular, with its impoverished vernacular, will often fail us. Our normal standard will be nine, eight, or it may be only seven areas: if the number is less than that, it will -be only with diffidence, if at all, that we shall pronounce a linguistic phenomenon to be Common IN.

4. When we confront together languages thus diversely situated in geographical position, we are at the same time comparing languages that are related in the most various degrees of relationship. It will happen, for instance, that we shall compare the Malay of the Peninsula, the Minangkabau, of Sumatra, the Javanese, and the Masaretese of the eastern ' border. Now the Minangkabau is closely allied to the Malay, ' the Javanese is more distantly connected, the Masaretese still more distantly; and the same sort of thing will occur in all our comparisons. Now if we find one and the same linguistic phenomenon occurring in several forms of speech which are related to one another in the most various degrees, that is to say, even in such as in other respects are most distant relatives, then we can with perfect confidence regard such a phenomenon as being Common IN.


 * [This applies in particular to the northern part of Halmahera: see Huetuig's article in Bijdr. 1907-8, pp. 370 seqqq]