That which was said by Dr. Adriani in 1914 concerning the relationship of the
with an Upper Mori population,
21
whom they superseded and in whose land they themselves settled, but with whom at the same time they themselves intermingled by adopting their language. What their original language might have
been must constitute a further investigation. Probably they used to speak a Lalaki or Mekongga dialect, or a closely related idiom, because these mutually very closely related languages likewise belong to the Bungku-Mori group,
lying geographically closest in the neighborhood and to name just one point of similarity are likewise missing the prenasalized s cf. also § 26.
8. The grammatical differences between the dialects are especially to be found in the area of the pronouns. This
subject is treated at very great length in Chapter 4. Also a few things shall be added concerning the other points of difference in the area of grammar.
22
Nevertheless, as for what shall be said in this book about the dialects, I make the least possible claim to completeness, and it must entirely be considered an ‘extra’. I very much hope that it shall
be, in combination [p. 7]
with that which shall be said below about the sound system, sufficient to justify the proposed classification.
Speaking generally, Upper Mori has been affected by sound change in stronger measure than the other dialects. To name just the principle points of difference: the tendency toward voicing of prenasalized stops is very much
stronger in Upper Mori, in more cases a has changed into o or e, and the t into s than in Tinompo, Watu-Karunsi’e and the other Lower Mori dialects.
23
Some verb stems in Upper Mori even have different forms when they are combined with certain affixes, something which is not encountered in Tinompo. So one can be certain that he is dealing with an Upper Mori dialect
when one encounters next to each other the forms monggaa ‘eat’, kumaango ‘eat it’, mo’alo ‘take’, umaleo ‘take it’, mowawo ‘bring’, waweo ‘bring it’, monggito ‘see’, kumiteo ‘see it’ from the stems which in Tinompo are
respectively kaa, ala, wawa and kita.
24
Some words in Upper Mori have a more old-fashioned form than in the other dialects, e.g. mosa’a ‘ugly, bad’, Tinompo mosa’o, Malay jahat; monta’a ‘set traps and the such, Tinompo monta’o, Malay tahan, and the words
which in Upper Mori end in -ui but in Tinompo and elsewhere end in -i see § 41, but these cases are to be considered the exceptions which prove the given rule.
On the whole the words in Watu and Karunsi’e have the same form as in the mokole dialect. The latter however is more conservative than the former two and thus is the least decayed of all Mori dialects. The difference concerns
primarily the vowel a, which has become o less often e in a greater number of cases in Watu-Karunsi’e than in Tinompo, etc., for example Watu, Karunsi’e, Upper Mori aaso, Tinompo aasa ‘one’; Watu, Karunsi’e, Upper Mori
oruo, Tinompo orua ‘two’; Watu, Karunsi’e, Upper Mori iro third person plural personal pronoun, Tinompo ira, etc. So also in Watu-Karunsi’e one finds mo’alo ‘take’ next to Watu umale’e, Karunsi’e umalee ‘take it’, and
mowawo ‘bring’ next to Watu wawe’e, Karunsi’e wawee ‘bring it’, where Tinompo has respectively mo’ala and umalao, mowawa and wawao.
Although there are yet more features to be cited in which Watu-Karunsi’e and Upper Mori correspond with each other in contrast to the mokole dialect, nevertheless one can say that the latter stands in between the former
two. My provisional impression is that in respect to the grammar and lexicon the mokole dialect stands somewhat closer to Upper Mori than it does to Watu and Karunsi’e, but the data on which this impression rests are too little to
be able to speak with certainty. The vocabulary of the Watu and Karunsi’e dialects approaches that of Bungku, which corresponds with the geographical layout. Provisionally Bungku must remain considered a separate, though
closely related, sister language.