Page:History of the Indian Archipelago Vol 2.djvu/20

 O LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE The noun admits of no variation in its form to express gender or number, which are effected by adjectives, as the first is in our own tongue. One simple inflection represents the genitive case, and the other relations are expressed by prepositions ; nay, even the prepositions, in situations where they could not be dispensed with in other languages, are omitted, and the sense left to be made out from the context, — a practice very consonant to the genius of the language. The adjective is still more simple in its form than the noun, admitting of no distinction of gen- der, number, or case, and seldom of any change by comparison. The pronouns are equally invariable in their form. Their position before or after a word de- termines them respectively to be pronominal or ad- jective. Those of the first and second person are very numerous. There is none at all of the third, except in a possessive form. Now and then the word selfi^ vaguely so used. The verb, like that of other languages, may be divided into active and neuter. There is but one mood, the imperative, deteimined by any change in the form of the verb. The rest are left to be understood by the context. The simple form of the verb expresses present time, one auxiliary a perfect past, and another an indefinite future, and these are all the tenses of a Javanese verb. With iO