qq._

[7] _Reports of the Cambridge Anthropological Expedition to
Torres Straits_, vol. iii. _Linguistics_, by Sydney H. Ray
(Cambridge, 1907), p. 528 (as to the relation of the Polynesian
to the Melanesian language). As to the poverty of the Polynesian
language in sounds and grammatical forms by comparison with the
Melanesian, see R. H. Codrington, _The Melanesian Languages_, p.
11.

But whereas the three peoples, the Polynesians, the Melanesians, and the
Malays speak languages belonging to the same family, their physical
types are so different that it seems impossible to look on the brown
straight-haired Polynesians and Malays as pure descendants of the
swarthy frizzly-haired Melanesians. Accordingly in the present state of
our knowledge, or rather ignorance, the most reasonable hypothesis would
appear to be that the Melanesians, who occupy a central position in the
great ocean, between the Polynesians on the east and the Malays on the
west, represent the original inhabitants of the islands, while the
Polynesians and Malays represent successive swarms of emigrants, who
hived off from the Asiatic continent, and making their way eastward over
the islands partially displaced and partially blent with the aborigines,
modifying their own physical type in the process and exchanging their
original language for that of the islanders, which, through their
inability to assimilate it, they acquired only in corrupt or degenerate
forms.[8] Yet a serious difficulty meets us on this hypothesis. For
both the Polynesians and the Malays, as we know them, stand at a
decidedly higher level of culture, socially and intellectually, than the
Melanesians, and it is hard to understand why with this advantage they
should have fallen into a position of linguistic subordination to them,
for as a rule it is the higher race which imposes its language on its
inferiors, not the lower race which succeeds in foisting its speech on
its superiors.

[8] 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