BOAS] HANDBOOK OF AMEEICAN INDIAN LANGUAGES 29 



ever, the most fundamental, is the phonetic independence of the ele- 

 ment in question. It has been pointed out before how difficult it is 

 to conceive the independence of the English s, which expresses the 

 plural, the possessive, and the third person singular of the verb. This 

 is largely due to the phonetic weakness of this grammatical element. 

 If the idea of plurality were expressed by an element as strong pho- 

 netically as the word many; the possessive part of the word, by an 

 element as strong as the preposition of: and the third person singu- 

 lar, by an element like Tie — we might, perhaps, be much more ready 

 to recognize the character of these elements as independent words, 

 and we actually do so. For example, stones, JoTin^s, loves, are single 

 words; while many sheep, of stone, he went, are each considered as two 

 words. Difficulties of this kind are met with constantly in American 

 languages. Thus we find in a language like the Chinook that modify- 

 ing elements are expressed by single sounds wliich phonetically enter 

 into clusters which are pronounced without any break. To give an 

 example : The word anid'ldt i give him to her may be analyzed into 

 the following elements: a (tense), n i, i him, a her, Z to, o (direction 

 away), t to give. Here, again, the weakness of the component ele- 

 ments and their close phonetic association forbid us to consider them 

 independent words; while the whole expression appears to us as a 

 firm unit. 



Whenever we are guided by this principle alone, the limitation of 

 the word unit appears naturally exceedingly uncertain, on account 

 of the difference in impression of the phonetic strength of the com- 

 ponent elements. 



It also happens that certain elements appear sometimes with such 

 phonetic weakness that they can not possibly be considered as inde- 

 pendent units of the sentence, while closely related forms, or even the 

 same forms in other combinations, may gain the strength which they are 

 lacking in other cases. As an example of this kind may be given the 

 Kwakiutl, in which many of the pronominal forms appear as exceed- 

 ingly weak phonetic elements. Thus the expression He strikes him 

 with it is rendered by mix'H'dsqs, in which the two terminal ele- 

 ments mean: q him, s with it. Allien, however, substantives are 

 introduced in this expression for object and instrument, the q assumes 

 the fuller form xa, and the s the fuller form sa, which we might quite 

 readily write as independent words analogous to our articles. 



