1889-90.] THE Dl^NE LANGUAGES. 183 



number of nouns. Among the essentially connotive nouns we find the 

 names of the parts composing the animal body. Thus, although the real 

 root for the word "heart" in its indefinite sense is tst, this monosyllable 

 is never employed alone. Though you may not specify it in English, 

 the word used in D^n^ particularizes the nature of the heart referred to, 

 viz., whether it is human, or simply animal. In the first case, the root 

 (tzt) must be preceded by the particle ne, the radical element in tcene, 

 man. Were we to replace this by the prefix cc which contains an idea of 

 vagueness or indefiniteness, we would thereby refer to the heart of a dead 

 animal such as that which might lie before a surgical student for the 

 purpose of dissection. 



This last prefix (cc, c, i, a, ti, ko, kivo, etc., according to the dialects,) 

 constitutes the only semblance of an article of which there is any trace in 

 the D^n^ languages. It precedes certain monosyllabic roots or com- 

 pounds of monosyllables such as, in Carrier, cetan, leaf; celo, nest; cera- 

 pa-tscsC (lit. hair-for-awl) needle. It has some affinity with the He- 

 brew prefix article m H H . That would-be article, like the rj of the 



original >' H. is assimilated by the vowel of the possessive pronoun or the 

 desinential letter of the words with which it is agglutinated. Thus, " his 

 nest " is said ii-to instead of u-ccto, and the prefix ce likewise disappears 

 in such compounds as soJi-to, "robin-nest," tci'rcvs-tan, " aspen leaf," etc. 



The D^n^ dialects lack declensions of any description. As in the 

 modern analytic tongues of Aryan descent, the office of the cases is, with 

 one single exception, filled by prepositions or rather /c'j'/positions ; for in 

 D^n^, as in the Turanian idioms, it is a general rule that the governed 

 word precedes the governing. The exception is the genitive or posses- 

 sive, which is expressed as in English by first designating the progenitor 

 or possessor and then prefixing the possessive pronoun in the third per- 

 son to the word denoting the offspring or the object possessed. Thus ]Vil- 

 yam Jt-ycen has exactly the same signification as the semi-Saxon " Wil- 

 lelm hys lond," a disintegration of the original " Willelmes lond," which has 

 come down to us under the modern contracted form " William's land." 



The possessive pronoun affects some nouns to such an extent as to im- 

 part to them a genuine inflection, in fact an inflection which, viewed in 

 the light of the D^n^ phonology is even more radical than that of the 

 Greek or Latin cases, since the element thereby inflected is not, as in 

 those languages, the vowel which in Den^ is unimportant, but the conso- 

 nant which constitutes the quintessence of the word. For instance Ci is 

 th2 Carrier monosyllable for " dog," which, when affected by the pos- 

 sessive pronoun becomes s-lcek. Its Chifxohtin equivalent tfin is equally 



