1902-3.] The Nah'ane and their Language. 533 



A feature of the possessive pronouns which the Nah'ane shares 

 with some related idioms is the absence of a term for the second person 

 of the plural. Most of the eastern Dene dialects even lack altogether 

 the same person of the personal pronouns, but the Nah'ane are not so 

 verbally destitute. In their minds, however, there lurks some vague 

 confusion about the difference between the first and the second person 

 plural of those pronouns which, at times, does not seem to be fully 

 grasped. 



In common with those of the other D^ne dialects, the Nahane 

 verbs are rich in persons, some, like the verbs of station and the verbs of 

 locomotion, having as many as eighteen for each tense, as against the 

 twenty-one their Carrier equivalents boast of. In the face of that 

 relative richness it is somewhat of a surprise to find that the regular or 

 common verbs have not even a single person representing the dual, 

 which is rendered, as with us, by the plural, while even the Carrier, 

 which is rather deficient in that respect, possesses, at least, the first 

 person dual for all the verbs. 



A point of resemblance with the eastern dialects is the plural of 

 some Nah'ane verbs, which is formed by the incorporation of the particle 

 da, without any alteration of the desinential syllable. Thus, until we 

 come to the plural, the conjugation of the verb fse-meszit, I wake up, is 

 practically that of its Carrier equivalent. But after this, the similarity 

 is confined to the main or initial root, which, through all tenses and 

 with any person, remains invariable in all the dialects. The following 

 partial conjugation of the present of the above mentioned verb will 

 illustrate my remark : 



Carrier. Nah'ane. 



\y\x3.\. — i' se-nttzii, we wake up, both of us. Dual. — fse-fiitzit. 



t' s4-ncehzit , you wake up, both of you. t'se-nahzit. 



fs^-rhcenztt, they wake up, both of them. t'se-hcenizit. 



Plural. — t'se-i'santilh, we wake up. Plural. — fs^-dasiizit. 



i's^-ncehtilh, you wake up. t' s^-dahzit . 



t's^-rhcentilh, they wake up. t's^-dahezit. 



Another most important point of resemblance of the Nah'ane with 

 the eastern Dene dialects, is the utter absence in the former of any 

 special negative form. This particularity may be said to constitute its 

 fundamental difference from the Carrier, Babine and Chilcotin idioms, 

 the verbs of which are distinguished by at least one, and frequently two 

 or even three syllabic inflections in addition to the negative particle. 



