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ESSAY II
93
64. The first group, which tolerates no consonants, or very few of them, as final sounds — Bug., Bim., Nias, Hova, etc., languages which, by the way, are not closely related together — does not represent the Common IN condition. For it can frequently be proved that in these languages final consonants have become mute, i.e. they existed in a former stage of the evolution of the language; this can be shown by the evidence of derivative words built up from word-bases by means of sufiixes. Common IN nipis, "thin", appears in Hova as nifi, having lost its s. From nifi is formed a verb manifi, "to make thin", and this forms its imperative with the suffix -a, as in § 30, but that imperative is not ma-nifi-a: it is ma-nifis-a, because here the s, having shifted into the interior of the word, is no longer liable to be affected by the laws that govern final consonants. Here, then, we have evidence that Hova also originally said nifis < nipis. And cases of this kind can be adduced in considerable numbers. But I have failed to discover in these languages any evidence of the former presence of final mediæ.
Note. — Progressive restriction in the choice of consonants serving as finals in the case of an Austroasiatic language has been illustrated by Blagden in JA, 1910, p. 498.
65. The second group includes languages which tolerate as finals all the consonants, with the exception of the mediæ. Where the languages of the third group exhibit mediæ, those of the second have tenues; thus Bis. bokid, "hill", is represented by Mal. bukit, and lawod, "sea", by laut. To this group belong in particular certain languages of Borneo, Sumatra, and the Malay Peninsula, languages, therefore, whose territories lie near to one another, and, furthermore, languages which are at any rate in part somewhat closely connected together. Nevertheless, in contrast with the languages of the first group, we are here in a position to show that these languages of the second group originally also possessed final mediæ. Only we cannot for this purpose use the evidence which served us in dealing with the first group, namely the extension of disyllabic word-bases by means of suffixes. Even when the above-mentioned word laut, " sea ",
