BOAS] HANDBOOK OF AMERICAN INDIAN LANGUAGES 31 



that the preceding phonetic group loses its more permanent phonetic 

 form whenever they appear added to it. To give an example: 

 takuvoq means he sees; takulerpoq means he begins to see. 

 In the second form the idea of seeing is contained in the element 

 taku-, which by itself is incomplete. The following element, -ler, can 

 never begin a sentence, and attains the significance of beginning 

 only in connection with a preceding phonetic group, the terminal 

 sound of which is to a certain extent determined by it. In its turn, 

 it requires an ending, which expresses, in the example here selected, 

 the third person singular, -_pog^; while the word expressing the idea 

 of seeing requires the ending -voq^ for the same person. These also 

 can not possibly begin a sentence, and their initial sounds, v and p, 

 are determined solely by the terminal sounds of the preceding ele- 

 ments. Thus it will be seen that this group of sound-complexes 

 forms a firm unit, held together by the formal incompleteness of each 

 part and their far-reaching phonetic influences upon one another. It 

 would seem that, in a language in which the elements are so firmly 

 knit together as in Eskimo, there could not be the slightest 

 doubt as to what constitutes the word in our ordinary sense of the 

 term. The same is true in many cases in Iroquois, a language in 

 which conditions quite similar to those in the Eskimo prevail. Here 

 an example may be given from the Oneida dialect. Watgajijanegale 

 the flower breaks open consists of the formal elements wa-, -t-, 

 and -g-, which are temporal, modal, and pronominal in character ; the 

 vowel -a-, which is the character of the stera-jija flower, which never 

 occurs alone ; and the stem -negale to break open, which also has no 

 independent existence. 



In all these cases the elements possess great clearness of signifi- 

 cance, but the lack of permanence of form compels us to consider 

 them as parts of a longer word. 



Wliile in some languages this gives us the impression of an adequate 

 criterion for the separation of words, there are other cases in which 

 certain parts of the sentence may be thus isolated, while the others 

 retain their independent form. In American languages this is par- 

 ticularly the case when nouns enter the verbal complex without 

 any modification of their component elements. This is the case, for 

 instance, in Pawnee: ta'tulcH i have cut it for thee, and riles 

 ARROW, combine into tatu'rikskH i cut thy arrow. The closeness of 

 connection of these forms is even clearer in cases in which far-reach- 



