1889-90.] THE DEN^ LANGUAGES. 211 



say iueh\ for " lynx." Tsonntsif is no more understood, except by elderly 

 people, while ni-yutse is still in use among some Carriers. As for the 

 three last words on our list, they are striking instances of the tendency of 

 a language to resolve its original synthesis into analysis whenever the 

 people that speak it are brought into contact with an alien race. 

 yaiJt-pa-tsd is a synthetic compound, meaning " he cries for daybreak," and 

 alludes to the nocturnal barking of the red fox. By dint of hearing the 

 French or English name of that animal pronounced by the H. B. Co. 

 traders, the Carriers have imperceptibly dropped their own synthetic 

 vocable to adopt the foreign analytic expression, and they now in- 

 variably say fiankms Uclkccn, " fox (he is) red." Same remark applies to 

 the two other words. 



PHILOLOGICAL CONCLUSIONS. 



Let us now recapitulate. 



The philologist who has had the patience to peruse attentively the 

 foregoing pages will find, I hope, little difficulty in deducing therefrom the 

 following conclusions : — 



1ST. — The Dene languages agree with most American idioms through 

 the polysynthetism which pervades all their composite words, and more 

 especially their verbs. 



2ND. — They also resemble the Turanian tongues on account of the 

 monosyllabism of most of their roots, their compounding and agglu- 

 tinative processes of word-building, the formation of their plural and of 

 their amplificative and diminutive, their law of euphonic sequence of 

 the vowels, their innumerable differentiating distinctions, the fundamen- 

 tal rule of their syntax, which requires that the governed word pre- 

 cede the governing, the postpositive character of their equivalents for 

 our prepositions, the scarcity of their terms expressive of relation or con- 

 junction, etc. 



3RD. — We must likewise note the following features which they possess 

 in common with the Semitic languages : the immutableness of their 

 initial consonants as contrasted with their vowels, which are essentially 

 transmutable through the varioub dialects, the nature of their affix article, 

 the number of the modificative forms of their verbs, and the grammatical 

 duality of such objects as are naturally twofold. 



4TH. — Lastly, the pronominal inflections of their verbs, their mode of 

 forming the number " nine," as well as the character of all the interroga- 

 tive and of some possessive pronouns, are as many traits of affinity with 

 the Aryan languages. Furthermore, we should remember that 



