1898-99. | THE USE AND ABUSE OF PHILOLOGY. 89 
determining the commutability of the consonants in the languages from 
which the compared words are extracted. As far as the Déné lan- 
guages are concerned, the complete list of commutable consonants will 
be found, in a tabulated form, in the Grammar which is to precede my 
great Carrier dictionary. Pending the publication of either, even a 
conscientious philologist may be satisfied with the instances of such 
convertibility noted in a previous paper, “ Déné Roots.” * 
While, as we have seen, some apparently different consonants are 
essentially the same, others, which seem co-affin and related, are so 
hopelessly distinct that they cannot possibly admit of commutation. 
Here I refer more particularly to the American languages which are 
celebrated for the delicacy of their phonetic elements. Perhaps none 
surpass the Déné in this respect. These have three ¢, seven # or guttural 
consonants, etc., all so strictly distinct that their phonetic peculiarities 
are often the only means of differentiating the meaning of words which, 
to the careless observer, would otherwise appear identical. Thus in 
Carrier Za means “lip,” cha, “three” (things), and ’¢a “feathers.” Edge (of 
a cutting tool) is A@in the same dialect, arrow is rendered by ’kra,t+ kra is 
an interjection, etc. As it is with simple consonants, even so it is when 
the articulation to express is double or multiple. Zsz in Carrier is the 
equivalent for “head,” while /s2 means “intestines,” and /’s¢ is the word 
for “canoe.” These examples might be multiplied almost ad cufinitum. 
We have in Déné two sets of words wherein the th sound (Petitot’s t’) 
is radical and characteristic in all the different dialects. They are syno- 
nyms for water and are proper to all words expressive of things even 
distantly related to water (¢hi#, thd ; tha in composition, ¢her, bottom of 
the water, etc.) and the various equivalents of the adjective “three” (tha, 
that, thane, thauh, etc.) In the latter words the ¢# (=7+/) is the means 
of distinguishing them from the number “four,” all the Déné equivalents 
of which begin with a simple Dr. Campbell could have learned 
as much by a mere glance at my published Vocabulary of Déné roots ; 
Petitot is no less explicit in his polyglot Dictionary. Therefore I am at 
a loss to understand why the former should have destroyed the identity 
of all those words by taking away the differentiating Z and writing 7, 
toh, etc.t 
It was with no smaller amount of astonishment that I came, some 
time ago, upon a comment on two American myths wherein the author 
* Transactions of the Canadian Institute, Vol. III., p. 150. 
+ The ~ of this and the following word is so faintly pronounced that I regard ky as expressing a single 
articulation. 
t See the Appendix. 
