Page:Williams and Calvert, Fiji and the Fijians, New York, 1860.djvu/236

 206 FIJI AND THE FIJIANS. ner ; thus, me vau waqa is " to fasten canoe," me voli ka is " to purchase things." But if the object of such a verb in the mind of the speal^er be definite ; if, for example, he wishes to speak of fastening " a canoe," or " the canoe," the governed noun, whether it precedes the verb or follows it, must have an article, and the verb receives one of a series of aSixes used for the purpose, the chief of these being a, ka, ta, ca, na, va, and ya, with the dissyllables taka, raka, and vaka. The affix which any particular verb receives is determined by laws that have not as yet been very accurately traced. The Mbau dialect not unfrequently accents the last syllable of verbs ending in a, instead of appending to them a particle of definition. The Fijian passive is made in various ways. Sometimes the simple form of the verb is employed, the meaning being fixed by the context.- Sometimes the definite affixes just named are used for this purpose, their final a being changed to i. In other cases certain particles, ka, ta, ra, etc., prefixed to the verb, convey the passive sense. The last method is resorted to when a thing has come of itself, or when either the person who did it is unknown, or it is not thought well to mention him. Date put before a verb either intensifies the idea of it, or denotes the frequent repetition of the state or action expressed by the verb. In like manner vaka before verbs has a causative power, and vei carries with it the notion of what is reciprocal or customary. Tense and mood are represented in Fijian by certain independent words, which the language puts before the verbal form. Thus, sa, ka or a, and na, with certain equivalents, answer in general to the present, past, and future respectively ; and me or mo makes a verb imperative, conditional, or infinitive. In regard to the subordinate parts of the language, which have not as yet passed under review, the adverb, preposition, and conjunction, little needs to be said. The language is poor in the last two classes of words, and, for the first, it either makes use of separate terms like eke, " here," and sega, " not," or it creates forms from adjectives by prefix- ing vaka, the equivalent of the German adverbial ending lich, and the English ly. The expletives of the language, or, as they are called by the natives, " the ornaments of speech," are singularly numerous, and it is a piece of Fijian affectation to crowd as many of them as possible into sentences. Greek itself is often out-Greeked by these dainty word- worshippers of the Southern Sea. The general character of the Malayo-Polynesian syntax was explain- ed in the outset, and it is not necessary that many details should be given with respect to this feature of the Fijian. Adjectives are put after their nouns when they are used attributively, before them when