Page:Primitive Culture Vol 1.djvu/207

Rh halala! of exultation, which becomes also a verb 'to shout for joy,' has its analogues in the Tibetan alala! of joy, and the Greek, which is used as a noun meaning the battle-cry and even the onset itself,, 'to raise the war-cry,' as well as Hebrew hillel, 'to sing praise,' whence hallelujah! a word which the believers in the theory that the Red Indians were the Lost Tribes naturally recognized in the native medicine-man's chant of hi-le-li-lah! The Zulu makes his panting ha! do duty as an expression of heat, when he says that the hot weather 'says ha ha'; his way of pitching a song by a ''ha! ha! is apparently represented in the verb haya, 'to lead a song,' hayo, 'a starting song, a fee given to the singing-leader for the haya';'' and his interjectional expression bà bà! 'as when one smacks his lips from a bitter taste,' becomes a verb-root meaning 'to be bitter or sharp to the taste, to prick, to smart.' The Galla language gives some good examples of interjections passing into words, as where the verbs birr-djeda (to say brr!) and birēfada (to make brr!) have the meaning 'to be afraid.' Thus o! being the usual answer to a call, and also a cry to drive cattle, there are formed from it by the addition of verbal terminations, the verbs oada, 'to answer,' and ofa, 'to drive.'

If the magnific and honorific o of Japanese grammar can be assigned to an interjectional origin, its capabilities in modifying signification become instructive. It is used before substantives as a prefix of honour; couni, 'country,' thus becoming ocouni. When a man is talking to his superiors, he puts o before the names of all objects belonging to them, while these superiors drop the o in speaking of anything of their own, or an inferior's; among the higher