Page:American Anthropologist NS vol. 1.djvu/428

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examples given by von der Schulenburg, it would seem that reduplica- tion does not form real plurals, but much rather distributives, as is the case in many American languages. Therefore we find it used for the frequentative of the verb, the simulative, and with the prefix indi- cating actions done while the subject is in motion. The phonetic laws underlying reduplication are not stated in the grammar, probably be- cause Bishop Ridley's method of spelling does not bring out the fundamental fact of the existence of a hiatus between the reduplicated syllables and the stem. The principle of reduplication consists in the repetition of the whole word with shortened vowel up to the first con- sonant following the first vowel inclusive. Von der Schulenburg's " re- duplication of last syllable " does not exist, but can be shown to be regular reduplication. While the number of classes of words that form the plural in various manners may be somewhat simplified, the whole subject of formation of plural is perhaps the most satisfactory in the whole book.

In the difficult chapter on the verb, the author does not show any very clear insight into the structure of the verb in American languages. The great paucity of tenses is striking, but the existence of a well- developed passive and the use of passives of transitive verbs for intran- sitive verbs, would have required much fuller treatment. But our principal criticism is directed against the treatment of the incorporated pronoun. There are two forms, — a suffixed form ist p. s. -«, 2d p. s. -un, 3d p. s. -// 1 st p. pi. -nt, 2d p. pi. -shim, 3d p. pi. -det, and another consisting of prefixes : ist p. s. na-, 2d p. s. ma-, 3d p. s. t- ; 1 st p. pi. dup- f 2d p. pi. mashim-. Even if the author was not able to find a clew to the significance of the two sets of forms, their exist- ence and occurrence ought to have been explained. It would seem that the second form has a demonstrative significance, but the subject is not clear by any means.

The language has a strong tendency to indicate in verb, noun, and preposition the location of the action as visible or invisible, the former by the sound d % the latter by^. Von der Schulenburg uses for these forms the somewhat unfortunate term " article," while they would much more properly be called "demonstrative affixes." Particularly the preposition a has the tendency to take d or g as prefix, according to the location of the event. The last word of a sentence, or the verb very often, takes the suffix da or ga, indicating presence or absence ; these, while phonetically identical with the preposition mentioned before, are purely demonstrative, and of a quite different origin. It is not correct to treat both as identical. The word fin is also called an article by the author, who thinks that it indicates persons who take part in an action

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