this is also Mal.; it is likewise a constituent of the demonstrative ai, and this is Form. So Ave may now add the Malay Peninsula and Formosa [i.e. the Northern Border) to the eight areas of distribution set out in § 85. We therefore pronounce the article i to be Common IN.
Note. — Specimen sentence with the article i : Tarakan, from the Story of the Tailed Man: "He ordered his wife to go to Silimbatu " = It was ordered the wife his to go to Silimbatu = sinusub i andu na makaw da Silimbatu
87. The article a. Philippines, Ibanag : tolay a mapia, " man a good " = " a good man " — Celebes, Mak.: jaraṅ a, "the horse" — Sumatra, Gayo: anak bujaṅ a, "boy big the " = " the youth " — Northern Border, Form. : kuiri a rima, " left the hand " = " the left hand " — Eastern Border, Rottinese: nau a, " the grass ".
88. The article a is also a component of the Old Jav. article aṅ < a + ṅ, which is used pretty interchangeably with the simple ṅ: e.g., aṅ anak or ṅ anak, "the child". Similarly it is a component of the pronoun anu, " somebody "(§ 135), which occurs in nearly all the IN languages.
89. Like the article i (§ 44), the article a often becomes indissolubly attached to substantives. Thus beside the Old Jav. buṅ, " sprig ", there is the Common IN buṅa, " sprig, flower, fruit " (§ 43); beside Old Jav. luh, " tear ", the Bagobo luha. A particularly characteristic case is that of pus, " cat ", in Mad., which in that language serves only as a vocative, whereas puts in Day. does duty in all syntactical relations.
90. From what has been said in §§ 87-89 it follows that we must attribute the article a to Common IN.
91. The article ra. This occurs as a living element of speech in a few languages only: Java, Old Jav.: ra Hyaṅ " the deity " — Madagascar, Hova : ra Be, " Mr. Big ".[1]
- ↑ [The original rendering here is: " der (Herr) Gross ", which illustrates better than the English translation the use of the article with a proper name (such as Be is in this context). Like German and Greek, but unlike English, Hova and some other IN languages admit the definite article before proper names of persons.]
