NOTES ON ALGONQUIAN LANGUAGES l By TRUMAN MICHELSON
NOTES ON Fox VERBAL COMPOSITION. I have tried to show in the "American Anthropologist" (N. s., 15: 473 et seq.) that the very great firmness in the verbal complex was more apparent than real. In the present paper I propose to emphasize a special feature which escaped me at the time; namely, that what I have termed "incorporation" should rather be called "loose composition," for it is desirable to restrict the word "incorporation" to such cases as lose their word-forming elements in the verbal complex. In the above-mentioned paper I have given some examples which clearly show that such elements are not lost in the Fox verbal complex; but, to bring this out more patently, it may be well to amplify the material. The examples are all taken from my unpublished texts, with a few ex- ceptions which are from Jones's "Fox Texts." The phonetic system employed is that of Jones; but I should state, that, after several seasons' field-work with the Foxes, I am convinced that this system is inadequate in a number of important points. As long as this paper does not deal with purely phonetic problems, however, it is justifiable to use a known system rather than confuse the reader with a new transcription of the same language. The sections () referred to are those of the Algonquian sketch in the "Handbook of American Indian Languages." Jones's "Fox Texts" 2 and "Kickapoo Tales" 3 are quoted respectively "J." and "J. Kickapoo," followed by reference to page and line.
A good illustration of this looseness in composition is a'pdnuwlpitwdWAnaiyouiatc'
THEN THEY CEASED USING THEIR TEETH.
Observe that uwipitwawAri THEIR TEETH
1 Printed with permission of the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution.
2 William Jones, Fox Texts (PAES l).
- William Jones, Kickapoo Tales (PAES 9).
occurs in the middle of a verbal complex, but suffers no elimination of the pronominal elements u wdWAn' ( 45) beyond that of the terminal ', which would be lost also if we had to deal with a verbal stem. The initial ai oj the stem aiyo is responsible for this alone, exactly as is the initial u of uwlpitwawAn' for the loss of the terminal i of the stem poni CESSATION (see 1 6). Such a loss is not comparable with the elimination of terminal w of nouns before the possessive suffix m: e.g., ketugimamenanAg' * OUR [inclusive] CHIEFS (J. 62.22) as contrasted with ugimdw a CHIEF, the " of which is a suffix showing that the noun is singular and animate; and with the denominative ugimawis" HE WOULD HAVE BECOME CHIEF (J. 26. 1 6), in which i is the copula, and s is the verbal pronoun of the potential subjunctive third person animate singular ( 30). Had we true cases like this in verbal complexes, we should call them "incorporations." Examples like ki'u'tugi- mdmipen" THOU SHALT BE CHIEF TO us (J. 8.3) do not count; for tugimam is simply abstracted from the possessed noun, and then verbalized in the manner shown in the above-mentioned paper. A supposed case in which certain elements were thought to be eliminated (American Anthropologist, 15 : 473) has turned out to be erroneous. The error was induced by two factors; namely, a mistrans-
4 A word like netugimdm" MY CHIEF, reconstructed by myself, but absolutely certain in formation (cf. the Kickapoo vocative netogimame o MY CHIEF! [J. Kickapoo 86.17, 26]), would bring this out more clearly. The difference in the vowel-quantities, supported by Kickapoo, is unexplained. The elimination of w before the possessive suffix m occurs also in Cree, Ojibwa, and Algonkin; very probably also in other Algonquian dialects. Lacombe has a completely wrong explanation. Owing to phonetic laws, the state of affairs in Ojibwa and Algonkin is largely disguised.
