182 TRANSACTIONS OF THE CANADIAN INSTITUTE. [VOL. I. 



The third class contains composite nouns formed, as a rule, by com- 

 pounding, though sometimes by agglutinating, monosyllabic or dis- 

 syllabic roots. Such are ne-na-pa-ra (literally : man-eyes-edge-hair), eye 

 lashes ; tcvpe-ic\ wild sheep horns ; i)iai-re, vegetable oil, instead of mai-Ae, 

 literally fruit-oil. These nouns being mere compounds of roots belonging 

 to the two former categories have the same degree of relative immutable- 

 ness with regard to the various dialects as the radicals which enter into 

 their composition. 



The fourth and last class is made up of verbal nouns which, as their 

 name indicates, are nothing else than verbs in the impersonal or personal 

 moods employed to qualify objects of secondary import with the help, 

 sometimes of a radical noun, sometimes of a pronoun, and always of a 

 prepositive particle prefixed to, or incorporated in, the verbal substantive. 

 Of this description are the \\ox^?> pe-yoen-ccUiccl {Vxt. with-earth-one-cleaves), 

 plough; ?/-^wcr/-/j-ci',cr/rt^ (lit. it-on-one-sits), seat; a'^e^i-pa-j'ciu (lit he-works- 

 for-house), work -shop. These and similarly formed words are the only 

 terms which fall under the too comprehensive remark of Dr. Trumbull 

 quoted in the previous chapter. 



Of these four classes the first may be said to comprise about two-fifths 

 of the whole aggregate of nouns, the remainder being distributed in al- 

 most equal proportions among the three other categories. 



In the foregoing we must not fail to notice tw^o grammatical com- 

 bining processes common to some Aryan idioms, compounding and ag- 

 glutination. A third process of a different nature, change of meaning by 

 intonation or vocal inflection obtains also among some — not all — of the 

 D^n^ tribes. Some of these intonations are even proper to fractions of 

 tribes only. Thus j'^; which means " sky " in almost all the dialects be- 

 comes " louse " to a Southern Carrier when pronounced in a higher 

 tone. Northern Carriers have another vocal inflection which is combined 

 with the final hiatus and is also peculiar to them. Among them a'//a 

 means "hands" (of an animal) : with the final hiatus it becomes a'//a', 

 " bark " (of the spruce). Stse corresponds to the English " my stone," 

 by adding to which the hiatus inflection we obtain Slse', " my daughter" 

 (as named by the father). 



Judging by the restrictive notes contained within the parenthesis we 

 perceive that the D^n^ nouns are no exception to the rule common to 

 most Indian languages which ascribes to the substantives the property of 

 connotiveness in addition to that of denotiveness. But I must hasten to 

 remark that, apart from the polysynthetic compounds which are conno- 

 tive by reason of their synthetism, this rule applies only to a limited 



