224 THE MASARWAS AND THEIR LANGUAGE. 



llcaiiiityc Ico'Iiarc kliai. The Bushman has two, horses; \\gaieha 

 juhcni crckica giniioc. The cattle of the Chief are lost; Aba ka 

 chikiva clioo karohzca, I bought a dog for the boy. There is a 

 kind of locative case, as jnwa, in the house, jinao, at the well, 

 hiiiiio, in the tree, though it is doubtful if these forms are really 

 locatives. 



Adjectives, properly so called, are few in the language. 

 The same word may be used as a noun or as an adjective, as 

 \kao, new or newness. ::io, foolish or foolishness. The adjec- 

 tive undergoes no change when connected with the noun, as 

 \koo hii, a big tree but if we wish to use the adjective predica- 



tively we must say, hii ekxva 

 tic, the ox is white, whereas 



kov, the tree is large, jiihc ckzva 

 tic jnhc would mean a white ox. 

 The adjective does not assume the plural form, when connected 

 with a plural noun, either attributively or predicatively, as \tic 

 jiibcra, white oxen, jubcra crckzva, The oxen are white. 



The comparison of adjectives is exceedingly clumsy, and 

 similar to that in Bantu. If we want to say, This stone is hard, 

 we must say rH^/Tca c karii; but if we require to say, This stone 

 is harder (than that one), we enijiloy the form c\\g-a'a c karii 

 Wfjzva a khaisa, which means. This stone is harder than that 

 stone; and for the superlative the form c\\gzva c ho sc karii, This 

 stone is hardest of all stones. Sesarwa, in this respect, resem- 

 bles both Namaqua and Bantu. Numeral adjectives exist only 

 up to five. Beyond that many are spoken of. T have heard the 

 expression " two hands and two feet," but not in tlTe sense of 

 exact numeration. I do not think the average ]\Iasarwa counts 

 beyond five except in Sechuana. 



There are three persons, singular and plural, in the lan- 

 guage. The forms are the same for n^asculine and feminine. 

 In the pronoun of the first person an interesting alternative form 

 occurs in the plural. The ordinary form Tsc means men and 

 women indifi^erently, but the form ka is a special form meaning 

 men only. 



Other pronouns, such as relative, interrogative, possessive, 

 distributive and indefinitive occur. The forms for singular and 

 plural are generally the same. 



A'erbal forms are remarkably well developed in the lan- 

 guage of the Masarwas. There are two voices, active and pas- 

 sive, three moods, five simple and a number of compound tenses. 

 Bertin, in his grammar, most of which was drawn up from 

 Arbousset's and Lichtenstein's notes, says that beyond the present 

 and past tenses the others were either imperfectly developed or 

 not at all. This is not so in Sesarwa, for we have present, past, 

 future, perfect, and past perfect, all with well-defined forms. 

 The particles which go to express the various relations are 

 partly suffixed and partly prefixed. In addition, there are nega- 

 tive forms of all tenses, formed by the addition of negative 

 particles. 



The number of individual verbal forms is very large. This 



