190 TRANSACTIONS OF THE CANADIAN INSTITUTE. [VoL. I. 



A word concerning the modes, tenses, persons and numbers shall serve 

 us as an introduction to the subject. As in the Hebrew grammar, there 

 is, properly speaking, but one mode, the indicative, in the D6n6 dialects. 

 The imperative can hardly be called a mode, since it is formed entirely 

 of persons taken from the present tense and eventual future. This future 

 furnishes also the equivalents of our subjunctive and optative. The infini- 

 tive does not exist. It is but imperfectly replaced by the impersonal. 



As for the tenses, they are of two kinds : primary and secondary. The 

 former are four in number, viz.: the present, preterite, proximate future 

 and eventual future. The proximate future refers to the action as being 

 on the point of taking place and corresponds to the English " I am 

 going to." The eventual future is vague and aleatory in meaning and 

 has no strictly exact equivalent in our languages. Each of these four 

 tenses is expressed by a single word as in Latin and Italian. The 

 secondary tenses are simply the primary tenses accompanied by auxiliary 

 verbs or particles, as m/e, ta, si/i, etc.* 



The D^n^ verbs have three numbers as their Greek co-relatives. But 

 while the dialects of the Eastern Denes possess, as a rule, three persons 

 for each number, the verbs of the Western Denes have generally but one 

 — the first — person for the dual. Par coiitre, their verbs of locomotion 

 and their verbs of station have no less than sixteen persons for each tense, 

 viz.: three for the definite singular, three for the indefinite singular, three 

 for the plural and seven for the dual. Besides, all those verbs whose 

 radical varies with the number, as is the case with the verbs of cubation> 

 have always — unless they belong to one of the two categories above 

 mentioned — ten persons. 



Before submitting to the appreciation of the philologist paradigms 

 illustrative of the foregoing, it will not be amiss to give a brief outline of 

 the internal structure of the verb in general. 



Every Dene verb, no matter of what form or tense it is affected, is com- 

 posed of at least two distinct integral parts : — ist. a monosyllabic root 

 which is always the desinential syllable of the verb and is generally — not 

 necessarily — invariable ; and, 2nd, a pronominal crement which varies 

 according to the person and the tense. This combination is identical 



* In the dialects of the Eastern D^n^s the tenses are, according to Rev. E. Petitot, the present, 

 imperfect, preterite and future. In justice to the student of those dialects, I think it necessary for 

 me to state that I am acquainted with missionaries ministering to the Eastern D6n6s who speak 

 in rather disparaging terms of that author's Dictionary and Grammar, and insinuate that, except 

 as regards the Loucheux dialect, which he is recognized to have thoroughly mastered, both 

 works are very faulty. Yet I hardly think that he could have erred in reference to such impor- 

 tant points of Grammar as are the conjugations and tenses. 



