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��INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF AMERICAN LINGUISTICS
��VOL. I
��Takelma, besides. At any rate, the pro- nominal object of the transitive cannot in Takelma well be interpreted as the subject of a passive, for the simple reason that it shows no resemblance to the intransitive subject, which differs in turn from the transitive subject. This and other examples that might be adduced show conclusively that evidence of the relation between passive and transitive forms cannot without further ado be used to demonstrate the passive origin of the transi- tive. Morphological evidence for such an origin undoubtedly exists in some cases, but hardly so abundantly as to establish the general validity of Uhlenbeck's main thesis. That in those American languages that distinguish singular and plural verb-stems the determining factor is not altogether the number of the subject, but, where the verb is transitive, the number of the object, is well known to Americanists. Uhlenbeck quotes ex- amples from Athapascan, Haida, Tsimshian, Chinook, Coos, and Porno. Naturally there are many other languages that present the same feature. Uhlenbeck considers it as a reflex of the primarily passive nature of the transitive verb; the logical object of an action being psychologically, and in many cases grammatically, the subject of the passive form of the action, and hence directly com- parable to the subject of an intransitive verb. A rapid survey of American languages classi- fying verb-stems in the manner described soon discloses the fact, however, that there is no clear correlation between this feature and the classification of pronominal affixes into transitive versus intransitive, or into active versus inactive, as contrasted with subjective versus objective. Thus, while Haida classifies its pronominal elements into active and inactive (to use Uhlenbeck's terminology), and Tsimshian and Chinook into transitive and intransitive, there are not a few languages of subjective versus objective pronominal classification that recognize precisely the same feature of number-classification of
��verbs as these languages. Shoshonean, for example, is a group of languages (I speak chiefly for Southern Paiute) that rigidly classifies its pronouns into subjective and objective; yet it makes an unusually liberal use of verb-stems that are distinct for singular and plural, singularity or plurality of the transitive verb being, as usual, determined by the object. One way out of the difficulty is to assume, as Uhlenbeck is evidently inclined to do, that in such languages as Shoshonean and Klamath the present classification of pronominal elements is a secondary feature, and that the numerical classification of verb- stems reflects an older status of pronominal classification. As I see no warrant for such an inference, I prefer to doubt seriously whether the two features are causally related. On general psychological principles, it seems likely enough that transitive activities are necessarily more closely connected in experi- ence with the object than with the subject. A passive interpretation of the transitive is hardly necessary. I would suggest, however, that the link between the subjectively deter- mined intransitive and the objectively deter- mined transitive verbs lies in the the causative origin of many transitives. If TO KILL is really in origin TO CAUSE TO DIE, then the difference between ONE MAN DYING and SEVERAL DYING would necessarily have to be reflected in a difference between CAUSING
ONE MAN TO DIE, KILLING ONE MAN, and CAUSING SEVERAL TO DIE, KILLING SEVERAL.
And, indeed, a survey of transitive verb-stems that recognize a distinction of number shows that they consist chiefly, if not entirely, of such as can be, in part even morphologically, explained as causative derivatives of intransi- tives. If such causatives be taken as a start- ing-point for number-discrimination in the object, other types of transitive with number- discrimination, if such exist, might be explained as due to analogy.
The greater part of Uhlenbeck's paper is taken up with his third class of evidence, the
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