Page:Language and the Study of Language.djvu/360

338 group and Easter Island, from New Zealand to Formosa. A few of those which are found nearest to Farther India possess alphabets and scanty literatures, coming chiefly from the introduction among them of religion and culture from India; but the Malay has adopted the Arabic alphabet. Considering how widely they are scattered, there prevails among these languages a notable degree of correspondence of material as well as of structure, and their coherence as a family is unquestionable; but the work of marking out subordinate groups, and determining degrees of relationship, is as yet but partially accomplished for them. Missionaries, American and English, have played and are playing an important part in laying them open to knowledge, as well as in introducing knowledge among those who speak them.

The Polynesian languages, especially those of the eastern division, are of simpler phonetic form than any others spoken by human races: their alphabets contain not more than ten consonants, often as few as seven, and their allowed combinations of sounds are restricted to open syllables, composed of a vowel alone, or of a vowel preceded by a single consonant; of combined consonants, or final consonants, they know nothing. They are polysyllabic, but hardly less destitute of forms than the monosyllabic tongues. Their roots, if we may call them so, or the most primitive elements which our imperfect historical analysis enables us to trace, are more often dissyllabic, but of indeterminate value as parts of speech: they may be employed, without change, as verb, substantive, adjective, or even preposition. All inflection is wanting: gender, case, number, tense, mode, person, have no formal distinctions; pronouns, indicative particles, prepositions, and the like, constitute the whole grammar, making parts of speech and pointing out their relations. Moreover, anything which can properly be styled a verb is possessed by none of these languages; their so-called verbs are really only nouns taken predicatively. Thus, to express 'he has a white jacket on,' the Dayak says literally "he with-jacket with-white," or "he jackety whitey." As a means of development of signification, the repetition or reduplication of a root is very