§ 1. INTRODUCTORY 



It seems well to give first of all a brief sketch of some essential features of the language. 



There is a fundamental distinction between verbs expressing states and those expressing 

 actions. The two groups may be designated as neutral and active. The language has a marked 

 tendency to give a strong preponderance to the concept of state. All our adjectives are included 

 in this group, which embraces also almost all verbs that result in a state. Thus a stem like "to 

 sever" is not active but expresses the concept of "to be in a severed condition," the active verb 

 being derived from this stem. The same is true of the concept "to scrape," the stem of which 

 means "to be in a scraped condition." Other verbs which we class as active but which take no 

 object, like "to tremble" are conceived in the same way, the stem meaning "to be a-tremble." 

 Active verbs include terms that relate exclusively to animate beings, either as actors or as objects 

 acted upon, such as words of going and coming, sounds uttered by animals and man, mental 

 activities and those expressing actions that can affect only living beings (like to kill, wound, etc.). 

 There seem to be not more than 12 active words that would not be covered by this definition. 



The meanings of many verbal stems are very specific, nice distinctions being made according 

 to the physical properties and forms of the objects the condition of which is described. Thus the 

 generalized concept "to sever" is in many cases expressed more specifically by words that might 

 correspond to English "to shatter, to split, to cross cut," etc., but also "to sever soft objects, to 

 sever in the middle of a flat object, at the border," etc. Other terms are specialized according to 

 the visual or acoustic effect of the condition. The latter might sound contradictory, because 

 sounds are produced by action, but the Dakota concept is rather: "it is the sound of being squeezed 

 through a narrow opening," "it is the sound of dripping," and the like. On the whole the acoustic 

 value plays a much more important role than the visual character. There are exceedingly nice 

 distinctions between states accompanied by various kinds of noises. 



The importance of the acoustic sense expressed in Dakota appears particularly in the various 

 forms of sound symbolism. Among consonants the series s, s, h and 2, 2, g represent series indi- 

 cating grades of intensity, s and 2 being the lowest grades, s and 2 middle grades, Ji and g the 

 highest grades. For instance sle'ca, sle'ca, tile'ca express "it is in a condition of splitting" for 

 thin objects, heavy objects, membranes. Vocalic symbolism appears particularly in terms 

 expressing noises. One series is i, u, e, a, as in kpi', (kpu), 1 kpe', kpa' which mean in order a light 

 crackling, the noise of stick striking stick, and a sharp noise like that of a firecracker; spi' small 

 things (berries), spu' larger things, are removed ; spe' s'e as though a pattern had been cut out of it ; 

 spa ' large things are removed. There is also another series e-o: k'e'ga a surface is scratched 

 leaving no marks, k'o'ga a surface is scraped. 



Nouns that are not derived from verbs are similar in structure to neutral verbs. 



The most frequent type of stem has the form consonant 2 -vowel-consonant. No more than 

 two consonants can ever be in contact. Terminal consonants of these stems are limited to the 

 medial surds p, t, c, k, and the sonants la 2, 2, g. Most of these stems carry the accent, provided 

 not more than one syllable precedes them. A second, less frequent type of stem has the form 

 consonant 2 - vowel. There is a strong probability that the fairly numerous bisyllabic stems of 

 the type consonant 2 -vowel-consonant 3 -vowel are compounds of two stems of the type conso- 

 nant-vowel. Most of these have the accent on the second syllable, the general pattern of 

 Dakota accentuation, except for monosyllabic stems without prefix. 



1 Only in the form kpukpa' large and small objects intermixed (like twigs, leaves and small fragments swimming in water, or colors). 



<»See §11, p.ll. 



a Or two consonants. 



3 Generally two consonants. 



