Note 8 — Chapter I

This seems to be the hypothesis favoured by Dr. R. H. Codrington, The Melanesian Languages, pp. 33 sqq. Compare J. Deniker, The Races of Man, p. 505. On the other hand Sir E. B. Tylor says (Anthropology, pp. 163 sq.), "The parent language of this family may have belonged to Asia, for in the Malay region the grammar is more complex, and words are found like tasik = sea and langit = sky, while in the distant islands of New Zealand and Hawaii these have come down to tai and lai, as though the language became shrunk and formless as the race migrated further from home, and sank into the barbaric life of ocean islanders." Dr. W. H. R. Rivers suggests that the Polynesian language "arose out of a pidgin Indonesian" (The History of Melanesian Society, ii. 584).